Internet of Things (IoT) is in the news for all the right reasons. The idea is fascinating because electronic devices (things) communicate by sharing data among themselves. While IoT definitely makes our lives easy, it is not a substitute for human work. While some of the popular applications of IoT are Smart Homes, Wearables, Driverless cars, etc., there is an important sector that requires IoT to improve its efficiency-Healthcare.
How Is IoMT Improving Healthcare?
Also known as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), medical devices used for diagnosis and treatment are connected to each other by the internet and cloud services. Different medical sensors and devices with Bluetooth or Wifi send data to the mobile device or Cloud, through web services or TCP protocol. This captured data can be sent or saved automatically to Cloud for diagnostic and analytics purposes for the doctor.
The process results in the generation of an unlimited amount of data that can be used by the hospitals to proactively and reactively cure their patients. IoMT devices can generate sensible data that can monitor the patient’s progress in real-time, improve the efficiency of the doctors, prevent future health scares, reduce the intensity of prevailing health conditions, and so on.
Better healthcare would be a necessity in the near future due to the increasing population alongside the increase in life-threatening medical conditions. IoMT promises to be a solid foundation on which technological advancements can be made in this sector. This is the reason why the value of the world IoT healthcare market is expected to be around $136.8 billion by 2021, according to a report published by Allied Market Research named, World Internet of Things (IoT) Healthcare Market-Opportunities and Forecasts,2014-2021.
IoMT vs Doctors?
As earlier mentioned in the case while talking about IoT, IoMT does not intend to do away with doctors. It will power them to give an enhanced healthcare experience.
Benefits of Internet of Medical Things:
1) Enhanced Decision Making:
The doctors are equipped to make data-driven decisions to treat their patients, in turn reducing the errors and risk involved in making tough calls and improving success rates.
2) Optimized Costs:
Using IoMT would prove to be cost-effective as the data generated will help doctors make decisions remotely, reducing his visits to the hospital and better decisions would reduce the number of days a patient is admitted to the hospital. This would again mean improved healthcare standards.
3) More Data Available:
This system would generate real-time data that would help identify trends in the healthcare sector and also check for the hazards of a particular medical condition.
4) Proactive Medical Care:
The trends identified from the data can help to proactively work against any impending epidemic and prevent future diseases from a patientÂ’s current statistics.
5) Improved Patient Experience:
Patients can track their present status and check for progress using this technology. Thus, they feel assured and positive about their improvement.
6) Telemedicine Using IoT:
Better connectivity is making Telemedicine blend seamlessly with IoT, enhancing its utility and helping remotely located patients better.
Although there are concerns about the security of the huge amount of data generated and the privacy of the patients, the Internet of Medical Things looks like a promising buzz that would revolutionize the way the healthcare sector functions.
Tech Vedika has been doing some interesting work in the Internet of Things sector for quite some time now. One of the interesting projects includes the wearable fitness band Citrix, which is the perfect personal fitness tracker. Stay tuned for more updates from us on our latest Internet of Things projects.
