source : www.fuzon.io
A lot of us know or may have heard about IoT (Internet of Things) but only few know about one of its main subparts IoMT which stands for Internet of Medical Things. IoMT is bringing a revolution in the field of medical science. It includes a combination of AI embedded IoT devices which will contribute to the enhancement of medical services. Want to know more? Let’s dive deep into it.
What is IoMT?
There are a lot of people living in remote areas where there aren’t a lot of hospitals or the people barely have access to vehicles, which is a huge problem especially in case of emergency. However, in this era of IoMT we can definitely overcome such problems, because this technology connects several medical devices, applications and machines to the internet (mainly healthcare information technology or HIoT) which assures a better interactivity of the patient with the healthcare professionals. Smart devices like automated blood coagulation testing machines, Internet connected inhalers, IoT connected contact lenses, depression monitoring machines and lot more.
Use-cases of IoMT:
Implementation of IoMT brings much ease in every aspect of the medical field. It gives a seamless experience for both patients and healthcare professionals. For example, the Hospital Information Management System(HIMS) stores and maintains all the detailed information such as patient’s records, appointed doctors to a particular patient, medicine records etc, the remote medical assistance can be saviours in case of emergencies, the advanced drug management system with voice automation can remind the patient about his medication.
Electronic Healthcare Record System or EHR offers real-time information immediately and securely to the authorized people. With help of this system doctors can check the latest lab reports and the entire history of the patient’s disease.
source : www.researchgate.com
Applications of IoMT:
Every year millions of people all over the globe lose their lives because of wrong diagnosis or medical errors or just because of negligence. But IoMT devices can definitely reduce the death rate. Let’s take a glance at the application of IoMT and different types of IoMT devices…
Remote patient monitoring:
It is almost an impossible thing for the healthcare professionals to monitor a patient after his/her discharge where risks can be still there. But now IoMT devices will be taking care of these issues. Hospitals will be able to do “remote patient monitoring”, which will help the patient to avoid risks and recover faster. In this system doctors will be able to pay virtual visits which will prevent the patient’s unnecessary visits to hospitals or clinics.
source : www.blog.capterra.com
Clinical Monitoring setups:
Manual clinical monitoring is a very time consuming process to undergo and sometimes causes severe errors. That is why to make this process much easier and less erroneous AI embedded IoMT devices are preferred. These are the combination of smart devices used by hospitals in their clinical setup. These are used to store the detailed information about a patient into the EHR (Electronic Health Record) which further gets recorded into cloud which can be used further for any particular purpose.
source : www.clinicaltrialsarena.com
Connected Inhalers:
Due to air pollution, active or passive smoking and exposure to certain chemicals or fumes respiratory diseases like asthma, COPD are on rise. These diseases can be life threatening if not taken care of properly. To avoid fatal conclusions IoT connected smart inhalers are the best solutions one can imagine.
Smart inhalers integrate connectivity with mobile apps, via internet or Bluetooth, these can help to keep a track of the usage. These inhalers can set a reminder for the next dose at the right time and can also notify the patient if he/she forgets to take the inhaler with them. These inhalers allow the patients as well as the doctors to keep track of the patient’s condition in a much easier way.
The world’s first smart inhaler to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was Teva's ProAir Digihaler (albuterol sulfate), which has a use-tracking real-time sensor that syncs it to a mobile app.
(Ref : https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-are-Smart-Inhalers.aspx )
source : www.medgadget.com
Blood Coagulation Testing:
A blood coagulation testing system allows the patients to check how quickly their blood clots. The IoT connectivity allows them to self monitor their blood coagulation with a finger prick and send the data to their mobile apps or to their healthcare provider which lower the risks of bleeding and stroke. It also sets a reminder for the next test.
A Switzerland based startup Qloudlab is working on a technology which allows patients to do blood coagulation test using their smartphone touchscreens. This system works by first applying a microfluidic plastic sticker on the surface of the smartphone screen which has tiny channels that allow blood to pass. A sample is taken and passed into the sticker a chemical that initiates clotting is then added to the blood, which in turn is sent through the microchannels in the sticker.
(Ref : Source )
source : www.medgadgets.com
Depression Tracker:
We often neglect our mental health which can lead to serious issues later. A smart wristband can keep a track for the symptoms of a panic attack. It can sense the hormonal breakdowns and increased or decreased heart-rate as well.
source : www.apaservices.org
Not only these there are Heart-rate monitoring devices, connected cancer treatment, air-quality sensor, glucose monitor and the list continues…
IoMT in India and throughout the globe: challenges and their solutions
In a growing economic country like India, the healthcare sector is one of the biggest sectors and IoMT is the game changer of the field. With low cost and high performance rate these technologies can give a boost to our healthcare sector. Mostly in the government hospitals it is often seen that the patients and doctors ratio is miserable which leads to losses of many innocent lives. In situations like this smart medical devices can come up with the best solutions.
In India, implementation of such advanced technology is a bit challenging and it’s not just India which is facing these challenges, these are some issues the whole world is facing while implementing IoMT technology.
Cloud Attacks:
Most of the IoMT devices are connected with the internet and interconnected with each other as well. And every day the number of devices is increasing exponentially. As a result, it leads to the increase of data breaching. These devices generally use default passwords which can be easily breached.
source : www.gcn.com
How to deal with it: Cloud attacks are very challenging but there are solutions as well.
- Encrypted communication is needed.
- Using IoT security analytics to review data from different sources to identify any threats.
- Using a public key infrastructure to secure communication
IoMT Strains Existing Network:
Most of the hospitals out there don’t have a stable network for IoMT devices. The amount of data being transmitted can strain the network resulting in bottlenecks that make it difficult for the authorized people to access any patient’s data when it is needed.
Solution of the challenge: Internet disruption can be fatal, so high speed internet is important.
- Using broadband for better and high speed networks.
Managing Huge Amount of Data:
This technology is involved in transmitting and managing a large amount of important data, which generally cannot be handled using the traditional algorithms. It requires faster processes in order to provide accurate data real quick. Which will be very difficult to implement.
Solution for this: By implementing advanced algorithms and machine learning, this large amount of data can be handled properly.
Outdated infrastructure:
In order to implement IoMT devices in the healthcare sectors it is extremely necessary to have an efficient infrastructure. But there are many countries including India which fail in the implementation.
How to solve it: Upgrading the outdated system to the newest technology.
Conclusion and Future work:
IoMT is being incorporated into many healthcare applications and services at a moderate pace. Though IoMT has many applications in the healthcare domain, many healthcare organizations are still hesitating to fully deploy it in their operations as IoMT is still in a nascent stage and is not fully standardized. But on the positive side because of its large number of advantages and massive growth, various leading tech giants like Google, Tencent, etc are investing in it. The IoMT market all over the globe is going to be a USD 142.45 Billion industry by 2026 with a CAGR of 28.9%. So we can see the progress is really fast and by 2030 IoMT will be one of the biggest industries in the world and will be a revolution.
(Ref : www.nz.finance.yahoo.com)