Internet of medical things: Disrupting and democratising healthcare sector

Internet of Things integrated with medical devices and equipment(s) is termed as Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). The Healthcare industry, which has been constantly ensuring to provide care for all has started to leverage the benefits of innovative technologies to enhance the quality and timeliness of care provided across geographies. Providing qualitative care is possible only when there is enough evidence to analyze the health data that is captured through sophisticated medical tools and procedures. Integrating such medical devices and systems with the Internet fosters medical professionals in capturing, monitoring, analyzing and making informed decisions for diagnosing the ailment. The communication protocol, which is safe and secure, further enriches the transfer of medical information throughout the system that might include the lab assistant, healthcare expert, nurse and patient.

As per the report published by Deloitte, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) market is estimated to be worth $158.1 Billion in 2022. The market is anticipated to grow steadily with every possible medical device integrated with smart technologies. Innovative medical systems like sensor-based wearables, pharmacogenomics, Remote Patient Monitoring tools, tele-medicine, Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), Human on a Chip, Organ on a Chip, Cancer treatment, Clinical evaluations, diagnostic tools, and others have already disrupted the medical devices industry and is expected to eventually grow. Many companies, including passionate start-ups are in the go of developing medical systems that can enhance the quality, timeliness of the care provided and improve efficiency of systems. Governments are encouraging IoT in healthcare delivery that can churn health data into business analytics/ cloud services and adopt to the latest IoT/ WSN technologies to augment existing healthcare treatment techniques for enhanced care.

Disruptive medical technologies and tools: Market analysis

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) market is fast growing, and is expected to deliver health care to all based on the actionable insights captured through the deep- dive analysis of health records and the permutated combination of previous medical history of patients. Frameworks and algorithms that can turn copious human health data can be churned under pre- defined tailored algorithms to illustrate the right medical support to be provided to the patient, considering the necessary functionalities integration

However, though the long-term achievements of IoMT are highly appreciated, there is a necessity to disintegrate the market requirements to know the bottlenecks persisting in the market.

The potential of IoMT devices in alleviating the healthcare outcomes is immense and there is a necessity to develop robust systems for harnessing the data and digitally enable all healthcare services in the near future.

How IoMT mine the gap in providing quality healthcare solutions?

IoMT based systems and devices can be captured under connected devices; wearables and the systems used in hospitals/ clinics. These devices are either Bluetooth connected or Wireless enabled, thus swiftly sharing health information in utmost secured manner, and thereby recording and storing this information.

Conclusion

Inclusion of IoMT devices into healthcare industry will enhance efficiency, reduce cost, save time, improve health record storage, foster informed decision making on delivering right treatment to care-seeker, improve operational efficiency of systems and processes; thereby creating a smart patient- centric healthcare system.

The article has been written by Raj Janapareddy, Founder and CSO, Healpha