Before the Internet of Things, patients could only communicate with doctors face-to-face, over the phone, or by text. There was no feasible mechanism for medical professionals or facilities to continuously evaluate patient health and offer advice. Remote monitoring in the healthcare industry is now possible through the Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices, releasing the potential to keep patients safe and healthy and enabling doctors to provide excellent treatment. As doctor-patient interactions have gotten simpler and more effective, it has also raised patient participation and satisfaction. IoT has a huge impact on lowering healthcare expenses and enhancing patient outcomes.
IoT in Healthcare use Cases
Nobody can deny the amount of positive impact that IoT has created across various fields. Here are a few use cases that have contributed to the healthcare sector in monitoring, diagnosing, and treating various types of medical conditions of patients.
Checking Blood Sugar
Historically, it has been challenging for the millions of people who have diabetes to check their blood sugar levels. Not only is it inconvenient to manually check a patient’s blood glucose levels and record the results, but doing so only reports the patient’s blood glucose levels at the precise moment the test is conducted. IoT devices can help in overcoming difficulties by continuously and automatically monitoring patients’ blood glucose levels.
Monitoring of Heart Rate
Periodic heart rate monitoring is ineffective in preventing sudden variations in heart rate, and the traditional continuous cardiac monitoring systems used in hospitals require patients to be permanently wired to the equipment, which limits their movement. Heart rate monitoring is now possible using several small IoT devices, allowing patients to roam around freely while yet having their hearts continuously monitored. According to doctors, the majority of contemporary equipment (IoT-enabled or any other) can produce accuracy rates of 90% or more.
Hygiene Monitoring
IoT can help in reducing the risk of spreading infections, there hasn’t historically been such an effective way to make sure that staff members and patients inside a healthcare facility washed their hands appropriately. IoT devices are now widely used by hospitals and other healthcare facilities to remind patients to wash their hands before entering patient rooms. Even advice regarding the best possible ways to sterilize to reduce specific challenges for a certain patient might be provided by the devices. These IoT gadgets can considerably lower hospital infection through regular reminders and messages.
Robotic Surgery
Surgeons can carry out intricate surgeries that would be challenging to handle using human hands by inserting tiny Internet-connected robots into the human body. The size of the incisions needed for robotic operations conducted by tiny IoT devices can also be reduced, making the procedure less invasive and promoting faster patient recuperation.
These instruments must be compact enough to carry out operations with less interference. To decide how to proceed during surgery, they must also be able to decipher complex circumstances inside of bodies. However, the use of IoT robots in surgery demonstrates that these difficulties can be successfully overcome.
Monitoring of Mood and Depression
Gathering information about the signs and symptoms of depression and patients’ general mood is been challenging since the discovery of a few neurological disorders. Healthcare professionals might occasionally inquire about their patient’s well-being, but they were unable to foresee abrupt mood changes. It would be difficult for patients to accurately describe their feelings. These problems can be solved by IoT devices (Mood-aware). Devices can fetch details regarding a patient’s mental state by gathering and analyzing data like heart rate, hormonal levels, and blood pressure. Even the patient’s eye movements can be tracked by sophisticated IoT devices for mood monitoring.
Benefits of IoT in Healthcar
To patients, doctors, the pharma industry, healthcare insurance, etc almost every aspect of healthcare has considerable benefits. Here are a few benefits of IoT in healthcare:
- Cost-saving measures:IoT devices make it possible to monitor patients in real time, thereby reducing frequent doctor visits, and hospital stays.
- Greater Treatment: It gives complete transparency and empowers doctors to make decisions based on the best available data. Earlier identification based on symptoms, ongoing patient monitoring, and real-time data might assist treatment at an early stage or even before they emerge. Continuous health monitoring makes it possible to provide proactive medical care. Continuous health monitoring makes it possible to provide proactive medical care.
- Management of Medications and Medical Equipment: Managing drugs and medical equipment is a significant concern in the healthcare sector. Through connected devices, these are effectively monitored and used at lower prices.
- Error reduction: Data from IoT devices not only helps in effective decision-making but also ensures error-free healthcare operations.
IoT in healthcare also has a few concerns to be addressed. Huge volumes of data, including sensitive information, are collected by linked IoT devices, raising questions about data security.
Adequate security measures must be put in place. Through real-time health monitoring and access to patient health data, IoT explores new facets of patient care. Healthcare stakeholders can use this data to increase patient satisfaction and health, create new business opportunities, and enhance operational efficiency. In an increasingly connected world, being able to utilize this digital power would set one person apart from another.
Rootfacts can be useful
The amount and heterogeneity of IoT devices in a hyper-connected healthcare industry need proper assistance from the planning to the implementation phase. All of your linked medical equipment may be made visible and secure with the help of trusted IoT service providers. In a healthcare organization, they can recognize, categorize, profile behavior and risk, and secure all medical and IoT assets. Rootfacts help you to know how each linked device behaves and communicates, and to use micro-segmentation policies to enforce performance on the current network and security infrastructure without having to touch or change the actual device. You can contact Rootfacts to make the most of every connected medical equipment you have. Our expert team is available to help you address various challenges that your enterprise facing while adopting IoT into your workforce. Do visit us at Rootfacts to enquire about IoT and related topics.