The internet of things (IoT) is changing healthcare. There are seven major trends of the IoT effect on healthcare – impacting us all.
Hospital-Centric to Personal Health
The days of centralized hospitals providing care are moving toward niche providers and smaller physician practices. Centralized hospitals can no longer compete with the personalize care provided by local physician practices.
Population swings will drive behavior from centralized care to distribution care with telehealth (general term for healthcare services at a distance), telecare (technology that allows patients to stay in their home and receive care e.g. mobile monitoring devices such as warden alarms, automatic gas shut-off devices) and telemedicine (more narrow than telecare and provides clinical services to patients in other locations). In an article from the NY Times by Mark Frazier, the article stated that “by 2030, China will have more people over age 60 than the total current U.S. population” (New York Times, 2013, p. 1). The aging global population can’t wait for in person physicians. Remote solutions that leverage patient engagement, exploits IoT and empowers families to make faster decisions required for their loves ones. No longer can patients wait to schedule appointments (already measured in months).
Active Patients
Patients are getting involved with their healthcare. IoT allows healthcare clinicians, administrators and technologists to empower the patient.
• Electronic health records (EHRs) – immediate access to history of care for clinician and patient
• Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags – can be used by hospital staff to pull data from patient wristbands for input into diagnostic test results (Zebra Technologies, 2015)
• Smart beds – these new age beds can detect when a patient is attempting to get up or when the bed is occupied (Chouffani, 2014)
Hospitals, insurance companies and local providers are witnessing first-hand the value of real-time data for improved patient care. IoT is making a different for the better. Many global organizations realize they must invest in IoT technologies to be competitive over the next 2-5 years.
IoT is changing the culture of care. Patients demand real-time information and are more active in decisions armed with more accurate information to make knowledgeable choices.
Sharing Anonymous Digital Health Records for the Common Good
In a matter of a few short years, digital health records will be available for widespread analytics. This opt-in model will start as a pilot and spill into the streets as a mainstream norm, feeding off the network effect fueled by user engagement (Intel, 2013).
A once hidden silo of information, will transform into a wealth of information for global population health and proactive wellness management.
Healthcare on the Cloud
The Senate Aging Committee, published Intel’s ‘The Internet of Things and Healthcare Policy Principles.’ In this report the Senate Aging Committee forecasts that “that half of all care will be delivered virtually, with providers paid based on their teamwork and quality” (Intel, 2014, p.1). This is already occurring in hospitals today with consolidation and decentralization. Hospitals are purchasing small practices and physicians previously managing their own time and patient care quality are now finding they have strict attendance and quality standards to which they must adhere.
Short term we’ll see diagnostics monitoring from wearables and phones move from infrequent to 24×7 service models. Implantables will also see growth with significant sensing technology advancements supporting the migration from hospitals to the home.
Asset Based Value
Improved customer experience will lead the list of benefits. One of the internet of things early business cases centered on inventory management, which led to advances with asset tracking. Some benefits of asset tracking are well known, others less so. For example another benefit is improved labor utilization to better understand SLAs for patient care by monitoring in house clinicians patient follow ups.
• Tracking a person’s status or condition
• Tracking customer, supplier, or partner transactions
• New asset purchasing
• Fleet management or telematics applications
• Labor utilization
• Security or surveillance
• Theft of and unnecessary damage to objects or assets
• Inventory levels
• Asset utilization
• Proactive alerts
• Asset condition
• Asset location
• Asset identification
• Supply chain visibility (Forrester Consulting, 2014)
Social Networks for Patient Interaction
Mesh networks of fully connected wired devices will start to share information. We’ll see this first with wearables. This will jump start near field communication (NFC) technologies which enables sets of ideas and technology for smartphones and other devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching the devices together. This immediate patient interaction will create social networks. These social networks will transform from purely social to informative and eventually evolve into platforms where clinical information can be shared including quality information on doctors, hospitals and experience ratings from the patient perspective in real-time.
Clinician Real-Time Knowledge Based Decisions
Clinicians will request data, but due to the volume of data available, it won’t be useful. Then they will ask for information, that won’t work either as it will not answer the questions of ‘why.’ Finally clinicians will demand knowledge upon which to make informed patient decisions. This will be solved with small niche tier 2 firms emerging to provide telematics for clinicians. These firms will enable the use of wireless devices and “black box” technologies to transmit data in real time back to a hospital, insurer or patient.
Overall IoT is making healthcare personal. We will see improved customer experiences, gains in supply chain optimization and responsiveness, better transparency with supply chain visibility, loss prevention will constrict-passing on saving to consumers, end-to-end cost efficiencies will emerge and the delivery process for healthcare will improve (Forrester Consulting, 2014).
Internet of things is going to improve healthcare and the quality of patient care. What role do you want to play?
References
Chouffani, R. (2014). Can we expect the Internet of Things in healthcare? Retrieved June 30, 2015, from http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/feature/Can-we-expect-the-Internet-of-Things-in-healthcare
Forrester Consulting. (2014). Internet-Of-Things Solution Deployment Gains Momentum Among Firms Globally. Retrieved from http://www.bulldogsolutions.net/ZebraTechnologies/ZBR1291/assets/Forrester%20Report%20-%20IoT%20Solution%20Deployment%20Gains%20Momentum%20Among%20Firms%20Globally.pdf
Intel. (2013). Technology Inspires Optimism for Healthcare. Retrieved June 30, 2015, from http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2013/12/09/the-world-agrees-technology-inspires-optimism-for-healthcare
Intel. (2014). The Internet of Things and Healthcare Policy Principles. Retrieved from http://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Intel%20-%20IoT-Healthcare%20Policy%20Principles%20FINAL%207-25-14%20%20(3).pdf
Makagon, K. (2015). Heralding the Intelligence Age (online image). Retrieved June 30, 2015, from https://blog.ringcentral.com/2015/06/heralding-the-intelligence-age/
Zebra Technologies. (2015). 3 Ways the Internet of Things Is Improving Healthcare. Retrieved from http://www.bulldogsolutions.net/ZebraTechnologies/ZBR1291/assets/Zebra_HealthCare-Profile.pdf