IoT in Healthcare: Advantages and Disadvantages

This article explores the advantages and disadvantages of implementing IoT in healthcare. It discusses how IoT can help healthcare institutes achieve their objectives and the challenges they face in terms of data security, integration, accuracy, and cost. The article also provides insights into the reasons why healthcare institutes need IoT and how it can be utilized to improve patient engagement and satisfaction.

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Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
IoT has been implemented in various businesses for meeting their objectives and
achieving success. IoT in healthcare would be of great help to the healthcare institutes (Subasi,
Radhwan & Kurdi, 2018). Some reasons why healthcare would need IoT are turning data into
actions; the use of IoT would help the measurable health situations improve. It is known that data
affects the performance; as a result tracking of health for better results and object measurement
are reasons why healthcares need IoT. IoT can also be utilized to improve the patients’ health;
IoT helps in updating the doctors regarding the patients’ health and their betterment (Thota,
Sundarasekar & Manogaran, 2018). The mobile devices of doctors can be connected to the
network and they are able to receive updates regarding their patients. IoT also provides an
advantage of promoting preventive care, where prevention is the primary aim of the institute. It
helps the patients to live in a healthy manner (Tyagi, Agarwal & Maheshwari, 2016). It also
helps in enhancing patient engagement as well as satisfaction, for advance care management, for
advance management of population health and many more.
Problem or challenges
Along with advantages, IoT in healthcare also has various disadvantages. Some of the
disadvantages faced by the institutes are regarding storing, securing and managing data. One
more barrier includes the deficiency of EHR. Along with the security and reliability issues some

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more issues that forms as barriers to the operations of the institute are the staffs who do not know
to operate it (Elhoseny, Ramírez-González & Abu-Elnasr, 2018). They do not have enough
knowledge regarding its handling. This is because of the lack of training provided to the staffs
about the uses and operations of IoT. Some disadvantages of IoT in healthcare are mentioned in
details below
 Security: The main concern of the institutes using IoT is the security of data. The security
of personal health information (PHI) which is transmitted and stored by various devices
that are connected to each other. Control on the access to the data has to be maintained
for security issues (Darshan & Anandakumar, 2015). This would also help them ensure
their compliance with the HIPAA regulations. Most of the institutes convince people
saying that they secure their data by encrypting them, most of the time institutes do not
have the control on security of data saved in the mobile devices that are used as data
access points. This is a major threat to the organizations; this threat is directly
proportional to the new devices added in the network. It is very difficult to maintain the
security of all the devices or data access points, this can only be done by sacrificing the
experience of user. The cost as well as resources required in this process is too much.
One more important threat to the institute’s data is the theft of a data access device.
Suppose if the mobile phone of a doctor is lost, it would be a great loss to the institute
because the data regarding patients might be stolen and used for ill purposes.

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 Integration: The amount of devices connected in the network is also one of the major
threats to the healthcare institute. This brings about barriers in the implementation of
activity in a successful manner (Laplante & Laplante, 2016). The network as various
devices connected to it which provides freedom of access to data to the users. This
creates a problem in the communication among the members. The problem in this is that,
the manufacturers of the devices have not agreed on the set of various communication
standards and protocols. Many devices might be connected to a particular network and
getting access to data, at the same time the process is made complicated by various
communication protocols as well as standards (Hou & Yeh, 2015). There is no uniformity
between the devices used for medical purposes; this reduces the chances of success by
using IoT in healthcare.
 Accuracy: The overall process of collecting as well as aggregating data comes along with
various complications. Healthcare IoT has been proved to be producing huge amount of
useful data. This information can be used for the betterment of patients by extracting
insights from the huge amount of data (Lee & Lee, 2015). Extracting insights from the
huge amount of data is very problematic if proper programs of sophisticated analytics and
data professionals are not present. Identifying the actionable and useful insights is very
important; this has been becoming difficult for medical specialists and physicians as the
information keeps in growing. There are many concerns regarding the amount of data

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because the health institutes collect huge amount of data. It reduces the quality of
decision making. As the number of connected devices that collect as well as generate big
data, the concerns are also increasing.
 Cost: IoT is not that affordable for the common man. The increasing cost of
implementing IoT in healthcare is the major threat for the institutes especially the ones
situated in developed countries. Though IoT provides various advantages to the
healthcare institutes such as “Medical Tourism” and many more. Along with the
advantages, there are many disadvantages that impose serious threat to the institutes
(Bhatt, Dey & Ashour, 2017). IoT in healthcare is a concept that seems fascinating but it
could not solve the cost issue till now. In order to make institutes implement IoT and
utilize its advantages completely, the stakeholders should make it cheaper. If this is not
done, then it will stay out of reach and only people those who belong to high class would
be able to afford it. Implementing IoT in business includes various hidden costs; these
costs are network communication costs, administration labor costs, technical support
costs and some more. The network communication costs are associated with different
connecting devices into the internet. Very often, this is done with the help of wireless
sensor networks, Wi-Fi, mobile network and radio frequency identification. The costs
that are related to the day-to-day management as well as operation of the assets of IoT
and the business processes.

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References
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