IoT in Healthcare is believed to achieve that envisioned ‘Smart Healthcare’ as it led to establishing a digitized healthcare system. What could we expect from Smart Healthcare with IoT? Connected medical resources and healthcare services as experts in the industry believe.
However, is it feasible? Alternatively, are we still talking about an imaginary world of healthcare services and solutions?
Although we know the healthcare industry suffers from many healthcare inefficiencies, IoT is considered as a game-changer for the domain. Convenience, efficiency, and automation are all IoT stands for.
Did you know that Healthcare in America is grossly inefficient? Due to this, the cost of healthcare services is high.
However, technology got the back of Healthcare and continually pushing up the sector to deliver better services with higher efficiencies.
Recently, the healthcare industry has gone through a significant transformation with the impact of IoT. According to Accenture, the forecasted value of the internet of healthcare things is expected to be $163 billion by the end of 2020.
IoT in Healthcare has shown to add value to critical healthcare operations. It is also believed to offer greater efficiency and accuracy in the operations of healthcare providers.
Let’s look at significant areas of healthcare services where upgrading systems and processes with IoT could bring significance is delivering value.
- Remote Health Monitoring
According to a stat, remotely monitored patients be 36 million by 2020, up from 4.9 million from the year 2015. World’s population has already become dense, and in that healthcare costs continue to increase. Individuals, as well as organizations, are seeking new ways to reduce costs and improve patient care.
In a scenario like this, IoT emerged as an excellent tech help for the industry. Using IoT, the healthcare industry is becoming capable of providing new services and solutions through remote health condition monitoring. Devices are in-built with sensors and actuators and are capable of collecting and sharing digital data to other remote locations using the capability of cloud. It is helping the industry enhance the patient experience as well as the efficiency of health professionals.
- Emergency Notification Systems
Innovation in IoT increases the number of connected devices, and emergency notification systems are one of its results. Due to connected devices and convenience of data sharing in real-time all due to IoT, today’s emergency notification system helps Healthcare overcome the two most essential in-efficiencies: speed and reach.
Reach is essential in medical assistance. IoT not only helps healthcare institutions and professionals to act proactively but also enable them to speed up the assistance processes.
- m-Health
Smartphones, along with innovative apps, are the most convenient way to collect health data and provide care. Besides smartphones, medical devices connected using a wireless networks also considered a vital health tool. However, one can look up to data and control and give command using the applications provided in mobile devices.
With the help of it, the patient can be monitored at home. IoT in Healthcare allows medical practitioners; on the other hand, the ability to set a patient-specific monitoring threshold as well as machine response parameters. It helps the practitioner look up to his patient not just from a remote location but also take action as per the change in the patient’s health.
There are several advantages of mHealth, such as remote patient monitoring at home, out-patient tracking, home nurse scheduling, remote diagnostics, and lots more.
- Wearable Heart Monitors
Heart rate is essential about your overall health. Heart monitoring is one of the easiest ways to gauge how well your body is working.
However, people usually avoid giving notice of irregular heartbeats or pain in the heart as they have to visit the doctor. However, today, smartwatches and fitness trackers are built with technologies like heart rate sensors. It has made it easy to keep tabs on your ticker without seeing your doctor. However, they’re starting to do a lot more than track your data.
- Point-Of-Care Medical Diagnostics
Point-of-care diagnostics though offered portability but lacked in delivering personalized and quick care — however, Point-of-care medical diagnostics with IoT.
Lead the industry towards smart and connected point-of-care that ensures personalized care and complete security at a global scale. It represents an excellent opportunity to provide sensitive, rapid, low-cost connected diagnostics through point-of-care medical diagnostics.
IoT not only helps patients and medical practitioners but also affects health insurance processes for better.
Connected devices have disrupted healthcare insurance completely. IoT based monitoring systems let the experts determine the trend in Healthcare. It enables them to come up with new strategies, i.e., replacing long-term health plans with short-term solutions explicitly designed as per individual needs. However, it needed precise data sets, and here, IoT in healthcare devices helps them collect. Having precise data, health insurance companies fine-tune their policies, and it also minimizes risks of losing funds due to unforeseen scenarios.
How IoT Exactly Helps?
Insurance firms are using monitoring sensor-based solutions which are today upgraded to perform IoT functions. These devices or solutions are biosensors, connected health devices, your Fitbit or other wearables along with mobile apps as a product in their insurance policies for monitoring and tracking your health factors, including customer behavior, identify kind of care needs to be served to a particular patient/customer.
This also helps policymakers design the bill accordingly and help them meet their target customers as well as their needs.
Having intensive and accurate data-set collected from IoT-powered health devices, health insurance companies are comprehensively stressing on the following processes for being predictable and forwarding with their policies and solutions foster customers spent more and more due to personalization.
Monitoring – Companies leverage IoT solutions and track patient behavior closely, such as their minute’s activity, and habits of day to day life. Smartphones, wearables, and other connected devices help companies significantly to collect data. They later consequently analyze the data to come up with predictive decision making.
Care optimization – Insurance companies also work closely with healthcare givers. You only get money once insurance claims are approved by the medical institutions.
IoT in Healthcare enables insurers to optimize your complete care. It helps customers avail exciting discounts on insurance premiums. Companies look up to IoT data along with analytical tools, and AI applied tools to have aggregated data.
With the help of analytics, insurers can quickly tracks which clinical processes would have a better impact on the patient’s wellness.
Payment – Payment systems are highly complex and often consist of multiple payers, insurance firms, government, and patients. In such scenarios, the industrial IoT system that provides real-time data as well as accessibility to enable care providers to get compensation for their services on time.
Having IoT in Healthcare, the industry can answer and overcome from in-efficiencies, such as:
- Waiting Time
IoT in Healthcare could significantly help reduce waiting time to get care. Availability of IoT powered devices lets the patient stay at home during the entire process. Even they don’t have to pay for an in-person visit to the doctor.
With IoT, a patient no longer needs direct medical attention; thus save himself from the stress of transportation, waiting times, and unnecessary additional tests. Therefore, no waiting time for healthcare assistance.
- Lost Time Accounts
A medical practitioner can’t recommend or suggest any healthcare support or service without looking into medical reports. Medical reports are essential, but it is challenging to keep them save and carry all the time. IoT that let the medical devices get access to data in real-time allows medical professionals to look up to patient’s information and reports.
It eliminates Lost Time Accounts from the process, thus fosters faster health support.
Wrapping Up
The future of Healthcare undoubtedly include IoT. Also, it is inevitable that IoT revolutionize the healthcare industry in several unexpected ways.
