Exploring the Internet of Things (IoT) in the Healthcare Sector

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the healthcare sector. It begins with a background on IoT technology and its applications, emphasizing the use of interconnected devices for patient monitoring and data collection. The report outlines the scope of the problem, poses research questions, and discusses various aspects of IoT in healthcare, including the definition of IoT technology, its applications (such as hearing wearables, healthcare charting, and ingestible sensors), and the numerous benefits it offers, such as simultaneous monitoring, affordability, data analysis, and remote medical assistance. The report also addresses the challenges associated with IoT implementation, including data privacy and security, integration of multiple protocols and devices, and data accuracy. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations and summarizes the key findings, highlighting the transformative potential of IoT in improving healthcare services and patient outcomes.

Running head: INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) IN HEALTHCARE
Internet of Things (IoT) in Healthcare
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Abstract
The healthcare industry requires a high level of need the use of technology in the recent times. In
the age of high-end technology, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology plays an extensive role
in several areas including the healthcare sector. The use of IoT connected technology would
enable several forms of opportunities in order to remotely sense and thus control the objects with
the help of communication networks. This report puts a thorough focus on the background of the
IoT technology within the healthcare sector. The report would also discuss the scope of the
project and derive certain research questions, which would help in identifying the prime focus of
the research. The report would also provide a discussion based on certain arguments while
supporting the research questions. Based on the recommendations, the report concludes by
summarising the primary idea and findings during the research.

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Table of Contents
1. Background..................................................................................................................................3
2. Problem Scope and Research Questions......................................................................................4
3. Discussion....................................................................................................................................4
3.1 Definition of IoT Technology................................................................................................4
3.2 Applications of IoT Technology within Healthcare..............................................................5
3.3 The Benefits of IoT within the Healthcare Sector.................................................................6
3.4 The Challenges of IoT Implementation within Healthcare Sector........................................8
3.5 The Opportunities of IoT Implementation within Healthcare Sector....................................9
4. Recommendations......................................................................................................................11
5. Conclusion.................................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................14

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1. Background
The Internet of Things (IoT) comprise of a set of technologies that would enable a vast
set of devices, applications and objects. The use of this technology would help in the interaction
and communication with other devices using the networked technologies. In the context of IoT,
different kinds of small devices would be frequently form an active network and would provide
real-time information (Islam et al. 2015). There are several applications within the IoT network
that also includes healthcare systems, which is the primary focus in this research paper. The
healthcare systems make use of different kinds of interconnected devices that would create an
IoT network, which would be entirely devoted for creation of a healthcare assessment (Gubbi et
al. 2013). The use of IoT network within the healthcare system would include the monitoring of
patients and thus would automatically detect different situations in which medical interventions
will be required.
Informative and communication technologies are one of the most vital tools, which
would help in the mitigation of some kind of problems that would be in association with aging
populations. In the recent times, there are certain modern measuring devices that includes
weight, blood pressure and movement sensors that would incorporate the capability of
communication (Bhatt, Dey and Ashour 2017). They would be able to create the IoT networks,
which could be implemented for home tele-monitoring. These are the same kind of devices,
which are generally employed by different health professionals for the purpose of checking the
overall condition of affected patients suffering from various ailments.
The general healthcare system would collect information from different IoT sensing
devices that would provide the function of interoperability (Chiuchisan et al. 2014). These IoT

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devices would also increase their security aspects that would be needed for the proper monitoring
of the patients connected within the IoT infrastructure framework.
2. Problem Scope and Research Questions
The problem scope within this research is based on the support for the several devices
based within the communication networks (Borgia 2014). The scope of the problem within the
research would be based on the number of patients and the impacts of IoT devices for enhancing
healthcare offerings for improving the internal operation.
Based on the conduction of research on the topic, some research questions that could be
framed are:
 How can IoT support different healthcare services and create social well-being?
 How would mobile networks be efficiently used for supporting an increasing number of
IoT devices?
 How can IoT technology in healthcare sector create opportunities and reduce societal
challenges?
3. Discussion
3.1 Definition of IoT Technology
The term of IoT was primarily stated by Kevin Ashton in the year 1999. The Internet of
Things could be defined as a worldwide interconnected network based on various interconnected
objects that would be able to uniquely address standard communication supported protocols. The
IoT technology incorporates different kinds of traditional fields such as Embedded Systems,
automation and control systems, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) based on facilitating Device
to Device (D2D) communication based within the internet framework (Da Xu, He and Li 2014).

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In the present times, the IoT technologies would have private and business users who would be
able to connect themselves together for the major purpose of sharing of information.
3.2 Applications of IoT Technology within Healthcare
With the vast form of impacts of technology supported by IoT within the healthcare
industry that is increasing day by day, there is a major need of improvement for access to care,
reduce the cost of caring and increasing the quality of healthcare sector (Dimitrov 2016). A
sustainable healthcare service would increase the focus on preventing, early detection of
pathology and homecare. With the impact of IoT, it would be helpful for personalizing the
healthcare services and maintain a digital identity for each concerned person (Pang et al. 2015).
The different equipment used within healthcare would be useful for communication directly with
the patients and resolve critical issues.
The different kinds of opportunities that could be created within the healthcare sector
would be made possible with the impact of the applications within the healthcare sector. The rise
of IoT technology in healthcare would help in:
 Reduction of availability time of emergency rooms.
 Tracking of hospital staff, patients and inventory.
 Enhancement of management of drugs.
 Ensuring the availability of critical equipment and hardware.
The IoT technology also introduces different forms of devices and wearables, which
would be helpful for bringing comfortableness in the lives of the patients.
Hearing wearables – These are such kind of new aged hearing aids and devices, which
have revolutionized the way in which people would interact with the world. In the recent times,

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these hearing devices would be compatible with bluetooth enabled systems in order to sync with
the smartphone of the user (Hiremath, Yang and Mankodiya 2014). These devices are able to
filter, equalize and then add some layered features with the real-world sounds.
Healthcare charting – The IoT devices helps in reducing of the manual work that would
be previously performed by the doctor during patient charting. These kind of devices would be
mostly powered by voice commands and have the capability of capturing the data of the patient
(Qi et al. 2017). It would help in making the data of the patient to be readily accessible for the
purpose of review. This would further help in saving the working time of doctor.
Ingestible Sensors – These kind of sensors have been discussed as a marvel within
modern science technology. These kind of sensors are pill sized. They are able to monitor the
medication within the human body and thus would also warn the user in detecting any form of
irregularities within body of the humans (Peppet 2014). These sensors could prove to be a boon
for any diabetic patient as it would help in curbing of health symptoms. These would also
provide an early warning against any vital diseases.
3.3 The Benefits of IoT within the Healthcare Sector
With the impact of IoT technology within the healthcare sector, it would provide massive
forms of benefits to different aspects within the healthcare sector. The different benefits
supported by IoT within the healthcare sector are:
 Simultaneous Monitoring and Reporting – The proper and real time monitoring of the
health of patients with the help of connected devices would be helpful for saving the lives
of patients to a certain extent. Different situations of medical emergencies such as
diabetes, heart failure, asthma attacks and many health issues could be easily solved

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based on the new technology. The various health equipment could be easily connected to
a smartphone or a laptop device (Rawat et al. 2014). Based on this, the doctors would be
able track the health-related data of patients. Thus the use of this data would help the
physician to suggest better healthcare recommendations to the patients.
 Affordability and End-to-end connectivity – IoT possesses the capability of automating
the workflow of patient care based on the help of healthcare mobility solutions. The
technology of IoT would be able to enable interoperability, information exchange,
communication and data movement, which would be helpful in bringing effectiveness
within the delivery of healthcare service (Kulkarni and Sathe 2014). Different kinds of
connectivity protocols such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other modern protocols have
changed the way in which the physician would be able to detect illness in patients. They
would also be able to innovate different revolutionary ways of treating patients.
 Data Analysis and Assortment – A vast amount of data that would be sent by a
healthcare device within a short timespan with the help of real-time application would be
hard for storing and managing if there is an unavailability to access the cloud. It is a
tough situation for various healthcare providers to acquire data from several devices and
sources (Madakam, Ramaswamy and Tripathi 2015). The use of IoT devices would help
in collection, reporting and analysing of real-time data and thus cut the need for storing
raw data.
 Continuous Tracking and Alerts – Real-time alerts would be extremely critical in the
kind of events that would be life-threatening. The use of IoT technology connected
devices would be vital for gathering of data and transferring the data to doctors for the
purpose of real-time tracking of health conditions of patients (Hossain and Muhammad

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2016). This kind of tracking service would be beneficial for dropping of notifications to
people who would be involved within the scenario with the aid of mobile applications
and other kinds of linked devices.
 Remote Medical Assistance – In several situations of emergency of patients, the family
of the patient could communicate with the concerned doctor who would be at a far
distance. With the help of such kind of mobility solutions within the healthcare sector, the
doctors could perform an instant check on the health of the patients and thus identify
those ailments (Boric-Lubecke et al. 2014). Numerous chains of healthcare delivery that
would be forecasting the development of machines could distribute drugs based on the
provided prescription and related data linked with the devices.
3.4 The Challenges of IoT Implementation within Healthcare Sector
The different kinds of challenges faced with the development of IoT technology within
the healthcare sector are:
 Data Privacy and Security – This is considered as the most significant threats that is
posed by IoT within the healthcare sector. The IoT connected devices would be helpful
for capturing and transmission of data within real-time scenario (Tao et al. 2014).
However, in certain cases most of the IoT devices would lack certain standards and data
protocols. There is also a significant level of ambiguity in regards to the regulation based
on in regards to the regulation based on data ownership.
 Integration of Multiple Protocols and Devices – The integration of several kinds of
devices would cause a certain hindrance within the implementation of IoT technology
within the healthcare sector (Botta et al. 2014). The primary reason of this problem is
based on the number of communication protocols and their standards.

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 Accuracy and Overload of Data – The aggregation of data is difficult based on the use
of different forms of communication standards and protocols. The vast amount of
generated data would be so tremendous such the derivation of insights would be a
difficult factor for doctors. This would ultimately affect the process of decision-making
within the sector (Zanella et al. 2014). Additionally, the concern based on overload on
the data is a rising problem based on the much number of connected devices that would
be responsible for the collection of data of the patients.
 Cost Factors – With the implementation of IoT devices within the healthcare sector,
there would be different kinds of challenges based on the factors of cost. The sensors
used within the IoT supported devices are overrated and thus it would be a major factor
for the healthcare sector to implement such kind of IoT enabled equipment within the
hospitals (He et al. 2014). There would be a high requirement of funding from the
government of the country in order to implement such kind of services within the
healthcare provider bodies.
3.5 The Opportunities of IoT Implementation within Healthcare Sector
With the impact of IoT within the healthcare sector, there are certain kinds of
opportunities for the healthcare sector that could be created with the impact of the IoT based
devices. Some of the affected persons who would be highly be benefitted with the impact of
useful opportunities are:
 IoT for Physicians – With the impact of home monitoring equipment and wearables
embedded within the IoT technology, the physicians would be able to keep track of their
patients in an effective manner. Based on tracking of the health conditions of the patients,
the healthcare professionals would become much watchful and connect with their patients

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in an efficient manner (Lee and Lee 2015). The software designed for connecting with
the patients should also be designed efficiently such that it would be able to give proper
details about the real-time conditions of the patients.
 IoT for Hospitals – IoT embedded systems would also be able to track real-time
locations of medical equipment such as defibrillators, wheelchairs, oxygen pumps and
several other monitoring equipment. Deployment of efficient medical staff at various
locations could also be analysed within real-time scenario (Lu 2017). There are also
certain IoT enables hygiene monitoring devices that would be helpful for the prevention
of patients from getting infected. IoT would also be help in the management of assets
such as control over pharmacy inventory and environmental monitoring. This would also
include humidity, temperature control and checking of refrigerator temperature.
 IoT for Health Insurance Companies – There are immense number of opportunities for
different health insurers embedded with IoT-connected intelligent devices. There are
certain companies, which can help in leveraging the captured data with the help of health-
monitoring devices (Laplante and Laplante 2016). The collection of data would help in
enabling for the detection of fraud claims and identification of several prospects based on
underwriting. The use of IoT devices would be able to bring in transparency between the
customers and health insurers based on underwriting, claims handling, pricing and
assessment of risks. In the light of the IoT captured data-driven decisions within each of
the operation processes, the customers would have an adequate visibility for underlying
each of the made decisions and the outcomes from those decisions. The health care
insurers would be able to offer different kinds of incentives to their valuable customers
based on using and sharing the health data that would be generated from the IoT

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supported devices (Almotiri, Khan and Alghamdi 2016). The insurers should reward their
customers based on using the IoT supported devices in order to keep track of the routine
activities. These customers would also adhere to the treatment plans and take certain
precautionary health measures. This would thus help the insurers to reduce the medical
claims in a significant manner. The use of IoT devices would also enable the insurance
companies to help in validating claims with the help of captured data based on these
devices.
4. Recommendations
With the impact of high-end technology within the healthcare sector, the use of IoT
supported technology would be able to provide several kinds of recommendations to the sector.
With the help of IoT enabled devices attached to the body of the individual, different healthcare
specialists would be able to continuously monitor the health of the individuals. Upon successful
use of the healthcare software and the efficient use of sensor technology, the software would be
able to provide recommended treatments to the patients. These healthcare organisations should
put some major form of investment within the use of IT supported technology for developing
high quality mobile applications. These applications should be able to get linked with the IoT
sensors in order to derive better results and thus provide better forms of suggestions. A possible
IoT based solution should be able to support different health practitioners for the combination of
IoT data based on a multitude of medical devices. They would also be able to derive insights
about the health of the patient without scattering of information. The healthcare sector should
also enable various security approaches with the use of IoT connected devices. With the help of
such kind of security, the details of the patient would be secured by the healthcare management.