The COVID-19 has surpassed the radical, conceptual, social, and even pedagogical norms. It has highlighted the shortcomings of the healthcare system and surged the need for healthcare 4.0.
During the pandemic, many new healthcare inventions have emerged, from diagnosing infected patients to vaccinating them. In 2021, the medical electronics market’s worth is estimated at $6.3 billion, which is further projected to reach $8.8 billion by 2026.
IoT has perfectly stepped into the shoes of “Front-line Worker” among all the amazing healthcare technologies. Lately, IoT development services are used to manage every aspect of the disease, including tracking, monitoring, and treating patients. IoT has and will transform the healthcare system for the better—let’s see how?
IoT Development Services in Healthcare After the Pandemic
Today, IoT application development services are high in-demand as IoT integrated mobile devices are expected to exceed 1.5 billion by 2021. Last year, the world witnessed numerous shades of IoT app development services in the healthcare industry, such as:
Early Symptoms Detection
The real-time COVID-19 detection and monitoring system based on IoT framework has been used to collect symptoms data from users to early recognition of virus suspects. The early symptoms detection was developed around five main frameworks:
Symptom data collection and uploading, Isolation center, Data analysis, Physicians consultation, and Cloud infrastructure.
Source:- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7428786/
In the beginning phase, different governments have opted for IoT application development services to quickly identify potential cases, like the Indian government has launched the Aarogya Setu app to collect data about coronavirus patients.
Remote Patient Monitoring
IoT-oriented telemedicine helps hospitals to provide remote treatments to patients. RPM is a digital technology that gathers health data from patients and transmits it to healthcare providers for recommendations.
For example, CMED Health offers IoT-powered health monitoring solutions via a mobile app. It helps users to monitor their health vitals by integrating with IoT devices. The measured data is shared on the CMED cloud server with authorized doctors for medical guidance.
Healthcare Facility Management
Poor healthcare infrastructure management is a big challenge for developing countries. Many countries have faced the problem of beds, ventilators, and other medical equipment inefficiencies.
Using the IoT development services, South Africa-based Gauteng health services launched an electronic Bed Management System (eBMS) to share hospital beds’ availability across multiple sites. The IoT sensors are placed on the bed to enable hospital staff to easily manage beds’ availability and reduce patients waiting periods.
Virtual Hospitals
Virtual hospitals or wards need to emerge to provide long-term care to the patients in their homes so that bed spaces can be freed up for critical patients. Moreover, for the safety of healthcare workers, virtual wards are very useful.
In Sydney, the first RPA Virtual Hospital was opened back in February 2020. The hospital is fully equipped to treat patients without contact using IoT devices. For instance, small pulse oximeters are attached to the fingers—to measure oxygen saturation levels, heart rates, body temperatures, etc.
Air Quality Measurement
COVID-19 is a respiratory disease; thus, air quality measurement is very useful to control its spread. The harmful coronavirus particles are nanometers in size and can’t be seen with a naked eye, so they can easily slip past traditional HVAC filters. With IoT app development services, tiny particles can be easily detected to improve air quality.
mCloud Technologies has already created IoT devices to detect changes in HVAC systems’ air quality. IoT air quality gadgets can add an extra protection layer against airborne diseases.
Vaccine Management and Distribution
After a full year of wait, the COVID-19 vaccine is finally here. But, it has raised a new challenge of storing and distributing vaccines. However, mobile and IoT technology have the potential to optimize the vaccine supply chain. With IoT sensors, cold chain data loggers can transmit accurate information of condition logs through data networks to the cloud.
For example, the Electronic Vaccine Intelligence Network (eVIN), an IoT-based mobile technology is developed by the Indian government and UNDP to share real-time logistics management data across the vaccine cold chain. The IoT sensors attached to the vaccine—helps in tracking location, temperature, and stock levels. With the adoption of eVIN, an 80% of reduction in the vaccine stock outs can be seen.
Delivery Drones
IoT-powered healthcare drones have supported the delivery of tests, medicines, PPE kits, and other medical supplies. Zipline drones have been providing medical supplies to rural centers in Ghana and Rwanda since May 2020. The drone company has delivered over 160 medical products to 2,500+ hospitals and healthcare facilities across Ghana and Rwanda.
Different types of drones have been used during the pandemic, like disinfecting public areas, crowd monitoring, and more.
IoT Challenges and Solutions in Healthcare
IoT development services have helped a lot during a pandemic. But, there are a few challenges that we have to tackle before fully embracing IoT in healthcare, such as:
Cost: IoT app development are expensive, and not every healthcare organization can adopt them. However, if organizations start small and create a professional IoT strategy, they can seamlessly collaborate with IoT.
Right Deployment: Today, multiple IoT applications are being used in the healthcare industry, from sensors to mobile applications. In this, making the right IoT deployment decisions required expert assistance. For the correct IoT deployment, you need to hire professional IoT app developers.
Security and Safety: IoT is a centralized technology that connects all your organizational data through a network. Therefore, security concerns are very high related to IoT in healthcare. However, if you hire a progressive IoT application development company to create your solution, they can easily improve operational efficiencies with advanced IoT strategies.
