With the emergence of IoT or Internet of Things, various technical gadgets have acquired precedence with connectivity and integration with each other. With a single connected family of products, even the healthcare industry can benefit tremendously in the coming times.

Increased health awareness has helped people to be self-reliant and follow a healthy lifestyle. This trend has fuelled innovation in healthcare owing to technology playing an important role to connect to doctors, physicians, and healthcare agencies. Enabling technologies to capture information related to the medical diagnosis of a person can help the professionals to check and assess a person’s lifestyle, and other vital parameters, thus boosting the treatment process.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a platform that quick and efficient capture of information and even facilitates analysis of information and provides the ability to share it with diverse stakeholders in a connected environment. This much needed disruptive innovation will help resolve the industry’s current challenges with improved health outcomes at lower costs.

Assessing IoT Prospects in Healthcare

IoT is expected to add $1.9 trillion to the global economy by 2020 and even impact other concurrent trends. The new trends indicate a Smart Manufacturing infrastructure for healthcare, as hinted by the President. Real-time use of ‘big data’ is essential from the right sources, in this regard. It has been predicted though that IoT will take another 5-10 years for widespread market adoption.

Healthcare and medicine will not be untouched in this regard as new types of sensors, rapidly growing data analytics, and new healthcare structures are being formed.

IoT bridges interoperability challenges to change the way healthcare will be delivered. Industry analysts predict that patients would be able to take more responsibility for their health with the help of preventive measures and prompt care delivery.

The use of certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology will automatically boost the quality and efficiency of healthcare. Personalized care would be relevant in this context since IoT harnesses people’s centricity and blends it with technology for better results.

IoT is changing how people, devices and apps are connected and interact with each other and seeks to improve healthcare outcomes and lessen healthcare costs of accurate data collection in real-time. The widespread adoption of IoT is expected to reduce inefficiencies in healthcare with the help of sensors in diagnostic equipment, drug dispensing systems, robots, implantable devices, fitness sensors and the like. The sensors will perform data collections without manual intervention and conduct tests digitally with automatic records.

IoT applications in healthcare

• Chronic Disease Management: Use of devices that monitor a patient’s physiological conditions and then to perform analytics.
• Remote Clinical Monitoring: Transfer tasks of routine monitoring with automation leading to better staff productivity.
• Wellness and Preventive Care: Wearable technology will make health supervision convenient

The Internet of Things in Healthcare is certainly going to have a major impact on the health economy too.