Challenges of iot in Healthcare
What is the state of IoT for healthcare? Are IOT apps the magic wand to resolve problems in the medical healthcare industry? What are the prospects of IoT for healthcare? Well the prospects of IoT are: a) It will provide real time data to support in clinical decisions b) It will increase collaboration between healthcare providers, clinics and hospitals c) It will help in better quality patient care due to: a) It helps in tracking and monitoring existing as well as potential diseases and ailments. e) It allows for the integration of patient’s healthcare information e.g. demographics, immunizations, medications..etc in a manner that is convenient for the patients as well as the doctors.
Now lets have a look at how it can be used to address the challenges presented by IoT for healthcare. We know that regular hospitals have to deal with large number of patients who need urgent attention. For this they need to have sophisticated tools that can monitor the health of each patient. In the present times there are various vendors who are developing and marketing several useful solutions for monitoring patient’s health in hospitals. Some of these include:
RFID chips: These chips are embedded in medical devices and can communicate with the hospital’s computers or wireless receivers. With the help of such smart sensors nurses, physicians or other staff can remotely track the vital signs of the patients. There are different types of RFID chips available in the market. One of the most popular is Bluetooth Low Energy. A drawback with this type is that its power consumption is relatively higher than other RFID chips.
Metrics: Healthcare organizations need to track the performance of their workforce. This is not possible without proper metrics. One such metric is attendance. Such devices can log the attendance of employees as well as visitors. The data can then be shared with different departments of the hospital so that they can take necessary steps to improve the workflow of the hospital. Again, as traditional hospitals adopt it for healthcare, these devices will play an important role in monitoring employees and visitors alike.
Electronic records systems: In present times there are many benefits related to electronic records system. For example, they are highly flexible and reliable. Also, they eliminate paper work, thereby helping to boost the productivity of the healthcare organization. However, he has several challenges that need to be addressed. For example, all the hardware needs to be compatible with various devices, regular updates are required and the best way to store medical records is to use the cloud based ehr platform
Distributed transaction processing: Healthcare organizations face several challenges when it comes to the implementation of Distributed Transaction Processing (DTP). This is required to process healthcare documents that come from various sources. Doctors’ prescriptions, pharmacies’ orders, healthcare bills and other documents coming from external sources need to be processed immediately. This is facilitated by iSCSI and iSCSD technologies that support multi-tier transactions and multi-currency operations.
Smart Chip: This is another one of the challenges that iSCSI and iSHS can be faced. iSCSI is enabled by the cleveroad application that ensures that only intelligent smart chips are used in hospitals. It is very convenient to use iSCSI in healthcare because it is implemented through third party applications which reduce the complexity of implementation considerably. On the other hand, the iSHS is enabled by the use cases such as smart cards and digital signatures. These are both secure methods of data authentication.
Challenges of iot in Healthcare – What Are the Challenges for Hospital Administrators? This is also known as the challenge of integrating healthcare IT with the clinical workflow management and patient safety systems. Healthcare workers are required to monitor the overall efficiency and the quality of services provided to patients. The sensors therefore need to be able to capture and report data accurately. Hospitals and other health care facilities must therefore build up a rich set of software and hardware sensors that allow them to integrate healthcare, data analytics and information science in real-time.
Deepak Wadhwani has over 20 years experience in software/wireless technologies. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies including Intuit, ESRI, Qualcomm, Sprint, Verizon, Vodafone, Nortel, Microsoft and Oracle in over 60 countries. Deepak has worked on Internet marketing projects in San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange Country, Denver, Nashville, Kansas City, New York, San Francisco and Huntsville. Deepak has been a founder of technology Startups for one of the first Cityguides, yellow pages online and web based enterprise solutions. He is an internet marketing and technology expert & co-founder for a San Diego Internet marketing company.