5 Internet Of Things (IoT) Healthcare Examples
Healthcare Medical monitoring equipment
IoT devices provide a slew of new ways for healthcare providers to keep track of patients, as well as for patients to keep track of themselves. As a result, the various wearable IoT devices offer a variety of benefits and challenges for both Healthcare providers and patients.
1. Remote Patient Monitoring
Remote patient monitoring is the most common application of IoT devices in healthcare. Patients who are not physically present in a healthcare facility can use IoT devices to collect health indicators such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, and more, eliminating the need for patients to travel to clinicians or collect data themselves.
When an IoT device captures patient data, it sends it to a software application where it may be seen by healthcare professionals and/or patients. Algorithms can be used to analyze data and make treatment recommendations or alarms. An IoT sensor that detects a patient’s exceptionally low heart rate, for example, may send out an alarm so that medical personnel can intervene.
A major difficulty with remote patient monitoring devices is guaranteeing the security and privacy of the extremely personal data that these IoT devices collect.
2. Blood Sugar Monitoring
Glucose monitoring has long been challenging for the more than 30 million Americans who have diabetes. Not only is manually checking glucose levels and recording findings difficult, but it also only reports a patient’s glucose levels at the moment the test is given. Periodic testing may not be enough to uncover an issue if levels change considerably.
IoT devices can help with these issues by offering continuous, automatic glucose monitoring in patients. Glucose monitoring systems minimize the need for manual record-keeping and can alert patients when their glucose levels are dangerously low.
Designing an IoT glucose monitoring device that: a. is tiny enough to monitor continuously without disrupting patients and b. does not consume so much electricity that it needs to be recharged regularly is one of the challenges.
These are not insurmountable obstacles, and products that address them have the potential to transform how patients monitor their glucose levels.
3. Monitoring Of Heart Rate
Monitoring heart rhythms, like glucose, can be difficult, even for individuals who are in healthcare facilities. Periodic heart rate checks can not protect against rapid heart rate changes, and traditional hospital technologies for continuous cardiac monitoring require patients to be permanently tied to wired machines, limiting their movement.
Heart rate monitoring is now possible with a range of small IoT devices, allowing patients to roam around freely while their hearts are constantly monitored. Although achieving ultra-accurate readings remains a challenge, most current equipment may achieve accuracy rates of around 90% or higher.
4. Hand Hygiene Inspection
There has traditionally been no adequate mechanism to ensure that providers and patients in a healthcare facility cleansed their hands correctly to reduce the danger of spreading infection.
Many hospitals and other healthcare facilities already utilize IoT devices to remind patients to wash their hands before entering hospital rooms. The gadgets can also give guidance on how to clean in order to reduce a specific danger for a certain patient.
A major issue with these devices is that they can only remind individuals to wipe their hands, not do it for them. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that these devices can reduce hospital infection rates by more than 60%.
5. Robotic Surgery
By implanting microscopic Internet-connected robots within the human body, surgeons can perform complex surgeries that would be impossible to perform with human hands. Simultaneously, robotic surgeries utilizing small IoT devices can reduce the size of surgical incisions, resulting in a less invasive process and faster recuperation for patients.
These gadgets must be tiny and dependable enough to allow for minimal disruption during surgery. They must also be able to decipher complex inside circumstances in order to make the best decisions possible during surgery. However, IoT robots are currently being utilized in surgery, demonstrating that these issues may be effectively solved.