Iot in hospitals

IoT in hospitals and healthcare

Everything ages and that’s just the way it is; our mighty earth is billions of years old and it will be finally  reaching its limits. Global warming and other effects caused by mankind is the sole suspect to its demise and we can say for sure that humans age too. We grow old and overpopulate the planet. With this growth comes the higher possibility for new chronic diseases, and taking care of 7 billion people is not an easy task to tackle. Hospitals and health care centers can’t reach to all the people out there and this is not good news. So, what can we do to ease the process? For starters, we can simplify the way health care centers and hospitals work by implementing Iot (internet of things) to hospitals and health related establishments.

How Can IoT in Hospitals

IoT in hospitals and health care is the best way to optimize patients’ experience dealing with an illness. The first idea for IotT in hospitals was to leave the diagnostic part of the process to take place right at patients’ homes. This way, the hospitalization process would be less due to the number of people staying in their homes. With the use of special software dedicated to IoT in hospitals, people can track their need and then apply for emergency rooms.

There have even been cases of IoT used in hospitals that replaced heavy equipment with a sensor attached to patients’ cellphones. There even are smart devices that take care of medical procedures such as smart inhalers, syringe pens, smart pills, and smart blister packs to name a few. These devices take care of everything an everyday nurse has to offer and all of that is done by IoT in hospitals.  RTHS or real-time health systems (monitoring equipment) are stepping up too and now are connected to different branches of a hospital or health cares. The connectivity that IoT in health care brings to the table is beyond mankind’s wildest dreams.

Biosensors are another revolutionary tech that IoT in hospitals can provide. These sensors can be attached to each patient and then transmit the real-time health data of the said patient to every mobile device available. This way a patient with a doctor in another hospital can get in touch with just about everything. Even doctors can track a patient’s status on a daily basis and assist them in their path to full health recovery.

Top benefits of IoT in health care

IoT in health care is a step forward in lower costs, for both hospitals and patients. The first thing to notice is the decrease in the total amount of patients waiting in line for emergency rooms. Hospitals report that on a daily basis, about an hour of each patient’s time is lost due to the waiting line for an emergency room.

Then, there is the price tag for a one time visit to the doctor. IoT in hospitals helps doctors to schedule a one-time visit during a 30 days period. This way the doctor gets to see more patients with an extended analysis of their health. IoT in hospitals is also affordable for the average visitor and they vary in supported devices. After everything is done with patients end; the machine learning algorithms come into place. They analyze all the data gathered by sensors and devices and send feedback to doctors and patients. These algorithms work on block chain initiatives and can be used in other industries too.

All of the data coming from a patient get stored on cloud-based server and it can cover just about everything. Receipts, transactions, medicinal data, and health status are accessible from any place or device. These data are safe and need different steps of authentication to be accessed; by these security measures, each patient’s data is shared only with their doctors.

IoT in hospital management

Every manager has to keep two points of interest in his/her mind; hospital resources and patients health care. The challenge in balancing these two targets comes from the fact that each hospital personal time crunch results in more expenses. More expenses lead to more expensive hospital bills and hospital bill are the primary focus of a patient with a serious or mild condition. With the amount of money saved on disposable syringes or additional pills, a patient only pays the price of a single syringe to be  used with the rest of medicine on a daily basis with no more costs. Smart pills change the behavior of medicine and decrease the number of times a patient has to swallow a pill.

IoT in health care and hospitals; make it easy to manage a series of hospitals instead of one and that’s the core benefit of IoT in hospital management.

Examples of IoT in hospitals

There are a lot of things IoT in hospitals can offer but for the most parts, equipment matter. Theses equipment come in different usage and shapes.

• Diabetes health care

 For instance “OpenAPS” can help in the delivery of insulin as a closed loop. This process allows all patients to receive a certain amount of insulin on the schedules selected by the doctors. Those who have not been hospitalized get notified to inject themselves before it’s too late.

• Digital contact lenses

The smart lens technology developed by Google can help the software measure the amount of glucose in patients tear. Although the technology is not fully functional, it has been met with standards to become a hospital standard issue.

• Sensors

These pills are swallowed in order to keep track of the body’s needs and status. Stored data gets sent to a smartphone (real time) notifying every change there is to patients. Blood pressure, heartbeat, glucose level and even the amount of pain killers active in their immune system.

• Connected inhalers and cancer monitor

Patients with serious conditions like cancer or oxygen tanks, get to wear activity trackers that help them analyze their body performance. Then the adjustments in medications or inhalers oxygen levels get set by the amount necessary. Even in special cases like chemotherapy patients get to wear the trackers a week before an operation and get a better report on their health status.

Conclusion

IoT is a new direction in every business. From power management to banks and right now to hospitals; they change our everyday lives and make them easier. Gone are days of waiting in line to get an emergency room. Gone are the heartbreaking weeks between a test and its results. A patient gets to see his/her health status with great details. With all these advances, the question is why not use them? They effectively lower the cost and increase the performance of health care and hospitals. There is nothing more valuable than human life and if IoT is the ultimate health care solution, we need to use it with maximum effort.