The Internet of Things is growing steadily these days, influencing a broad array of industries. In 2017, the global mobile health revenue is expected to reach $23 billion. The wearables market is projected to amount to $53.2 billion in 2019, with fitness and health trackers being the most popular IoT items in the world.
The hospitality sector and industrial manufacturing are the two spheres that invest most in IoT equipment, but it is also dramatically altering healthcare.
From the consumer angle, mobile and smart home devices can monitor their well-being. From the healthcare sector angle, IoT devices grant a chance to cut down expenditures and improve the quality of patients' monitoring, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.
For example, hospitals once managed their data via multiple systems. With the introduction of electronic health records (EHRs), info management became much easier. Medical portals, in turn, allowed patients to be more involved into the process to track medical records, download forms and prepare for appointments.
Here are a few more areas of impact:
Sensors
Every patient's dream is to be treated with comfort and love, and home is the best place for that. With smart devices, this dream seems really achievable.
Physicians can control their patients' health, thanks to humidity and temperature sensors that are able to provide a comfortable environment for recovery. Home monitoring systems also allow doctors to observe their patients' well-being, avoiding the necessity to be in the same room.
Wearables
These items deserve particular attention. There have been cases when simple alerts that track abnormalities managed to save a person's life.
Trackers' usage in cardiology is so important, because patients can be misled by symptoms and mix up heart attacks with bronchial asthma or acid indigestion. Fortunately, wearables act automatically by reacting to negative changes and sending timely notifications to hospitals.
Moreover, trackers can remind patients to take pills on time, releasing doctors from this necessity.
Mobile apps
Another healthcare IoT use case is mHealth. Medial mobile apps can be used not only as a means of communication between physicians/patients, but also as a monitor for pill dosages, breath, pulse, etc.
Mobile apps can be applied in radiology so that patients exposed to ionizing radiation during imaging procedures can avoid excessive amounts and risks of tumors. A mobile app that tracks medicines' expiration dates can be used by both patients (who don't bother checking small-font information on packages) and doctors (to control the number of effective pills in stock).
And smart medication dispensers doctors can even remotely control medication taking: the home devices automatically upload information to the cloud and notify physicians when patients forget to take their pills.
Conclusion
It's clear that smart devices have already changed the way we live and work, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. The examples above prove that the Internet of Things markedly affects healthcare, too, providing more connection, accessible data and, as a result, innovating hospitals' work and improving treatment for patients.
