Using the Internet of Things To Fight Virus Outbreaks |

What is IoT?

IoT has opened up various opportunities in the healthcare industry. The industrial IoT is all about huge data on a large scale. This will go beyond the manufacturing as well as energy and contains implementation with such huge data and various critical applications. And one of the industries which are at the frontline of industrial IoT is medical and healthcare.

A data stream network is generally a huge publish/subscribe network that transmits raw data bi-directionally between devices, users, and servers. Combined with the Internet of Things, a data stream network is the communication layer that adds more functionality to the IoT and its millions of connected devices.

The Internet of Things, or IoT, is a scalable and automated solution that has seen explosive growth in other industries such as automated manufacturing, wearable consumer electronics, and asset management.

IoT consists of several functional components: data collection, transfer, analytics, and storage. Data is collected by sensors installed on mobile, end-user hardware like phones, robots, or health monitors. Then, the mobile data is sent to the central cloud server for analytics and decision-making, such as if a machine requires proactive maintenance to prevent unexpected breakdown or if a patient needs to come in for a check-up.

Real-Time Technology in the Medical IoT

We may have seen the internet-connected MRI, heart rate monitor, or other medical equipment in the hospital, but how are such technologies affecting those who work near these devices and their beneficiaries?

Let’s have a look at how IoT mobile real-time communication is affecting the lives of medical authorities as well as health care recipients. In this article, we have also outlined about healthcare IoT communication security and how and why a data stream network requires securing that data.

Data Delivery and Synchronization

Medical IoT has improved the quality of patient care via more authentic and effective communications among caretakers. With the help of mobile applications and secure networks, nurses are capable to immediately approach patient information, and new updates are synced in real-time across all other attached mediums. Readings and gathered information from sensors are stored or produced in real-time with their synched current status.

This is important for crucial situations where both time, as well as the accuracy of data, is at the topmost level. With mobile alert notifications medical authorities are capable to attain a new level of potency and communication efficiency, keeping the team attached, informed, and more focused towards patients. Minimize response means healthy, happier patients, and enhanced standards for responding to patients.

Real-Time Location and Presence

With emergency response units, the tracing of geolocation and effective execution of response teams could lead to a question of life or death. Physicians are frequently required to move between patients’ rooms, clinics, laboratories, operating rooms, and offices. Combining the existing legacy with real-time mapping and geolocation, mobility can be easily tracked and implemented.

Based on this, physicians can also approach to patient data and patient’s care teams at any place and anytime via real-time messaging. Real-time location technology prevents valuable time by assuring that the accurate resources are accessible at the exact location, automates tasks depends on location, and increases the discharge process as well as yield. 

It supports healthcare leaders to recognize congestion in patient care delivery and improve resource utilization and patient satisfaction. And with technology advances, the benefits also continue to evolve. For mobility and readiness, and short-term cost savings RF is the technology that might be your first choice.

Administration

When it comes to medical administration, standard, value, and efficiency are of the topmost priority. In the past, many hospital administrators faced the challenge of selection between a digital and an analog solution for clinical productivity. However, with IoT technology become more accessible and affordable, many administrators have already taken the cross over.

Speedy message delivery and automatic audit trails terminate the requirement for pagers and another wireless alternative which can frequently be substantially outdated. With real-time access to patients, data staff can expend more time caring for patients while minimizing the risk of miscommunication or data delays which are expensive occurrences in a hospital.

With the help of patient-specific and big data information, hospitals can more effectively schedule patients by accumulating and using statistics in a cloud-based scheduling application. The outcome of this is a faster turnover and more pleased patients.

Technicians

Cloud-based data usage is also proving to be helpful for medical device technicians. With the help of internet-connected devices, technicians not only come to know about exactly where the problem is, but also they can be informed instantly, potentially minimizing device downtime. In addition to that, the device integrated with the hospital’s patient scheduling system, can divert patients to a location with an access device or reschedule patients.

Safety and Confidentiality

In Medical IoT patient and medical data, confidentiality and security is the most important thing. When data is transmitting and syncing between connected devices, it must be encrypted from endpoint to endpoint. Authentication (two-factor preferably) is another factor that should be constructed into IoT applications.

Lastly, administrative security requirements and global regulations, specifically HIPAA for healthcare, are continuously emerging and need to be addressed and upgraded. By looking at securing the healthcare Internet of Things from a global regulations point of view, design patterns require to be executed to comply.

For instance, data routing needs to avoid certain areas. Utilizing a Data Stream Network, streams of data can be customized to be routed via certain regions, countries, etc. But this doesn’t just implement to the transmitting of data, but also the storage of data. All these observations need to be considering when it comes to the healthcare IoT.

In this way innovation in health surveillance technology has reshaped the speed in which we respond to a global catastrophe with the help of real-time technology.

The current applications of IoT during COVID-19

Currently, IoT is already used to manage some aspects of the COVID-19. For example, drones are already used for public surveillance to ensure quarantine and the wearing of masks. AI has also been used to predict future outbreak areas.

Using IoT to dissect an outbreak

With the numerous and diverse datasets collected by mobile devices, IoT can have many more applications during an epidemic.

IoT can be used to trace the origin of an outbreak. A recent study by researchers at MIT used aggregated mobile phone data to trace, in granular details of short distances and periods, the spread of dengue virus in Singapore during 2013 and 2014. Therefore, overlaying geographic information system (GIS) on IoT mobile data from infected patients can do two things. Upstream, it can assist epidemiologists in their search for patient zero; downstream, it can help identify all the persons who have come into contact with the infected patients and may, therefore, also be infected.


Using IoT to ensure compliance to quarantine

IoT can also be used to ensure patient compliance once the potentially infected persons enter into quarantine. Public health personnel can monitor which patients remain quarantined, and which patients have breached the quarantine. The IoT data will also help them track down who else may be exposed due to the breach.


Using IoT to manage patient care

Interactive Map from Johns Hopkins Science and Engineering  In real time 

The scalability of IoT also comes in handy for monitoring all the patients who are high-risk enough to warrant quarantine but not serious enough to warrant in-hospital care. Right now, the daily check-up of the patients is done manually by healthcare workers who go door-to-door. In one reported instance, a healthcare worker had patients standing in their apartment balconies, so that he could fly a drone up to take their temperatures with an infrared thermometer. With IoT, the patients can have their temperatures taken and upload the data with their mobile devices to the cloud for analysis. This way, healthcare workers can not only collect more data using less time but also reduce the chance for cross-infection with the patients.


In addition, IoT can provide relief to the overworked staff at the hospital. IoT has already been used in the remote monitoring of in-home patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension or diabetes. In hospitals, telemetry, the transmission of biometric measurements like heartbeat and blood pressure from wearable, wireless instruments on patients to the central monitoring has been used to monitor a large number of patients with minimal staff. Here, IoT can be used to reduce the workload and increase the efficiency of the medical staff, all the while reducing the exposure of healthcare workers to infection.

Conclusion

The underlying technology and the IoT components that can be leveraged to enable a healthcare system to deal with disease outbreaks already exist; however, they are fragmented and not yet connected. Therefore, the system needs to be able to build up its infrastructure quickly to connect the components of data collection, processing, and storage, so that the system can scale and expand for disease tracking, preventive quarantine, and the in-patient care of the infected.











Using the Internet of Things To Fight Virus Outbreaks | Technology Networks