Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
Internet of Medical things (IoMT) has a new angle to the healthcare area and is gaining immense attention to increase the accuracy, reliability, and productivity of electronic devices. As new diseases are evolving day by day; therefore, scientists are contributing to a digitized healthcare system by interconnecting the available medical resources and healthcare services in order to get a cost-effective treatment for deadly diseases. IoMT has revolutionized the healthcare industry and its market is expected to exceed $10 billion from blood pressure and glucose monitors to MRI scanners by 2024. IoMT is a unique combination of medical devices and their applications with the healthcare information technology systems by using networking technologies to improve the quality of life, provide better care services, and can create more cost-effective systems. Some of the benefits of IoMT are-
- Simultaneous reporting and monitoring
- End-to-end connectivity and affordability
- Data assortment and analysis
- Remote medical assistance
- Research
- Reducing emergency room wait time
- Tracking patients, staff, and inventory
- Enhancing drug management
- Ensuring the availability of critical hardware
- Higher patient engagement
- Better patient outcomes
- A decrease in errors
- An enhanced patient experiences
Smartwatch, insulin pens, smart CGM (continuous glucose monitoring), brain swelling sensors, ingestible sensors, and smart video pills are examples of IoT devices used in the healthcare industry. The process through which IoT helps in the healthcare industry initially comprises collecting data from a patient through the sensor. Further, IoMT device with the help of a machine learning algorithm analyzes the collected data. Finally, the IoT device sends information to the cloud through which health practitioners are enabled to reach decisions.
Reports have suggested that there has been a $300 billion reduction in medical cost through remote patient monitoring and increased oversight of medication use. Although IoMT has great benefits, there are some challenges associated with it such as massive inputs of generated data, interoperability, dynamic networking, data security, increased attack surface, and obsolete existing software infrastructure. Nowadays, mobile devices are built with radio frequency identification tags that allow the devices to share information with IT systems thus, increasing the quality of medical treatment while reducing management costs.
Different devices including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth low energy, ZigBee, NFC, cellular, and satellite are the most popular connectivity technologies used by healthcare facilities complied with HIPAA privacy and security rules. Medical devices used for numerous healthcare applications can be categorized into wearable external, implanted, and stationary medical devices. The entire world is affected by the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a new menace to public health globally. To handle such a major pandemic globally, advanced computational technologies such as IoMT can be used for quick monitoring of the viral infection.
SNI Publications invites you to share your knowledge and recent advancement in IoMT by publishing your work with the Journal of Biomedical and Biological Sciences also a small piece of information that can be shared here itself in the comment section.
