The Importance and Various Use Cases of The Internet of Things (IoT) in the Healthcare Sector

The Importance and Various Use Cases of The Internet of Things (IoT) in the Healthcare Sector

Following the precipitous global uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has landed into an unprecedented situation. Health care sectors, their environments and patient attention strategies are evolving swiftly and in techniques that had not been previously envisioned.

IoT has dominantly become one of the most common definitions across the technological domain, with the ability to significantly enhancing the way we interact with the contemporary world. From healthcare devices to regular household gadgets, The Internet of Things (IoT) technology is getting more intelligent and connected to the internet, facilitating seamless communication between networks and devices. Here are a few IoT use cases, that have been essentially implemented in the healthcare sectors to provide better treatment for patients and has enhanced the overall healthcare operations.

Smart Wearable Sensor:

Wearable sensor nodes are the IoT sensors that measure physiological conditions and the vital signs, such as pulse, respiratory rate, and body temperature – as these are the essential signs for the determination of critical health. Additional IoT sensors that are implemented are blood pressure and blood oxygen sensors, as these parameters are often taken alongside the three vital signs. Doctors can have remote access to these vital signs through the smart devices and wearables used by the patients, therefore making it easier for doctors to evaluate the health aspects without actually meeting the patient.

Communication Between Healthcare Sectors:

Data obtained by the central database or server is not useful unless proper evaluation and analysis can be done with it to provide better healthcare services. This data should be forwarded to a database where relevant parties (such as caretakers or doctors) can securely access it. There are again several considerations when selecting a suitable communications standard for use in a health care system, including security, error-correcting capabilities, robustness against interference, low-latency, and high availability. IoT devices make sure that the transferred medical data are inaccessible to users without proper medical authorization.

Secure Cloud Storage Architecture & Machine Learning:

Medical information obtained from patients must be stored securely for continued use. Doctors benefit from identifying a patient’s medical history, and machine learning are not sufficient unless extensive databases of information are available to it. Based on research, cloud storage is one of the most significant method for storing data. IoT wearable devices and sensors can directly store data to the cloud storage without the need for manual assistance. Hence, doctors can access these data for further analysis and evaluation, directly from the cloud storage.

IoT for Personalized Medical Services

The modern proliferation of IoT enabled technology has paved the path to the emergence of personalized healthcare services. One of the most beneficial IoT services is indirect emergency healthcare (IEH). There are many emergency situations in which timely and effective response by a medical expert is highly desirable. Sometimes, these situations can be life-threatening if the patient is remotely located. IEH is considered to be a dedicated service offering a set of solutions such as post-disaster actions, information availability and record keeping. Where doctors can monitor and provide assistance to patients located at entirely different geography, this monitoring is done through IoT sensors, wearable devices etc.

The Internet of Things (IoT) services have enhanced the healthcare industry, increasing efficiency, lowering costs and putting the focus back on better patient care. Meanwhile, the Internet of Things is evolving from building blocks of automation and machine-to-machine communication to the smallest sensors. Several IT companies all around the globe are trying to collaborate with the major healthcare industry to incorporate innovative measuring and tracking capabilities with devices that would provide lucrative opportunities for market growth.

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