Internet of Things (IoT) in Healthcare. (Part 4)

APPLICATION OF IoT IN HEALTHCARE:

SMART-WATCH:

• Wearable IoT devices such as smartwatches are the most conspicuous application of internet of things (IoT) technology. The passive use of a wearable device can monitor vital signs and even can save lives. Using the wearable device the health issues can be detected such as irregular heartbeat etc.

• Wearables represent a new frontier in healthcare, as they can provide emergency care to the elderly, monitor baby cribs, gather continuous electronic health records to allow more patient-centred healthcare, enable hyper-accurate and extensive clinical trials that collect and correlate data across yet unrealized data points.

• The continuous monitoring of the user’s vitals wearables devices can provide allow people and medical professionals to notice irregularities etc.

• Recently tech-giant Apple started working on their smartwatch to detect depression levels. Every year lots of people take treatment for depression. This device track and suggest what to do in case of depression. This is an innovative example of artificial intelligence which helps to give prediction levels of the users. The internet of things in healthcare will help to cure the mental health of working-class people very effectively.

INSULIN PENS AND SMART CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITORING:

CONTINUOUS GLUCOSE MONITORING 

 

INSULIN PEN

• Smart Insulin pens are intelligent, convenient, reusable. It’s your personal diabetes companion that keeps track of your dose data. By using a mobile app called Inkpen keeps track of your data and helps you make decisions. It automatically records insulin doses, tracks active insulin, recommends mealtime and correction doses, shares therapy data with your doctor etc.

• People with diabetes use insulin pen to inject insulin, a vital hormone for people who have diabetes, they contain a cartridge, a dial to measure dosage and disposable needle.

• Insulin pens are nowadays used by many people because it is more simple, convenient delivery than using a vial and syringe.

• There are mainly two types of insulin pen they are:

1. Disposable Pen: this contains a prefilled insulin cartridge. Once used, the entire pen unit is thrown away.
2. Reusable Pen: this contains a replaceable insulin cartridge. Once empty, a person discards the cartridge and installs a new one.

SMART VIDEO PILLS:

A small pill can travel through a patient’s intestinal tract and take pictures as it travels. It can then send the collected information to the wearable device, which in turn would send it to a dedicated smartphone app. Small pills can also help to visualize the gastrointestinal tract and colon remotely.

• The tiny pills have a drug and an ingestible sensor. The sensor gets activated when it comes to contact with stomach fluid to detect when the pill has been taken.

• The data is then transmitted to a wearable patch that eventually conveys the information to a paired smartphone app.

• Doctors and caregivers, with patient consent, can access the data via the web portal.

HEARABLES & HEARING AIDS:

HEARABLES:

• Technologies or group of technologies that work in combination with each other to enhance an individual’s hearing ability is known as hearable.

• Hearables have the potential to be used in the management of hearing loss.

• Hearables can provide access to other assistive listening devices and audio devices and audio devices such as smartphones, TV’s, computers and FM loops.

• Hearables are likely to expand the range of technology types that now can be used to manage hearing loss.

• Hearables are new-age hearing aids which have completely transformed the way people who suffered hearing loss interact with the world.

HEARING AIDS:

• A hearing aid is an electronic, battery-operated device that amplifies and changes sound to allow for improved communication.

• User’s will able to connect and monitor their hearing aids, so they can stream sound from their android devices without additional hardware.

INGESTIBLE SENSORS:

• Ingestible sensors are the ingestible electronic devices, roughly the size of a medicine capsule, composed of biocompatible materials that make up the power supply, microprocessor, controller, sensors etc..

• These pilled size sensors which monitor the medication in our body and warns us if detects any irregularities in our body.

• These ingestible sensors can be a boon for a diabetic patient as it would help in curbing symptoms and provide early warning for the disease. 

• For example proteus digital health.

• It gives the device ability to telecommunicate for use in the healthcare industry for disease diagnostics and monitoring.

• They are non-invasive.

MOODABLES:

• Moodables claim to improve relaxations to helping people with stress disorders and ADD.

• These devices can read the brainwaves and send low-intensity currents to the brain accordingly.

• These techniques can be used on a healthy as well as on an impaired brain, this will help to understand an awful lot about human brain functioning and how mood can be elevated.

• Soon moodables will be human’s best friend in the years to come.

HEALTHCARE CHARTING:

• IoT devices such as 'Audemix' reduce much manual work which a doctor has to do during patient charting.

• It is powered by voice commands and captures the patient’s data.

• It makes the patient’s data readily accessible for review. It saves around doctor’s work by 15 hours per week.

REMOTE PATIENT MONITORING:

• Remote patient monitoring is a method of healthcare delivery that uses the latest advances in information technology to gather patient data outside of traditional healthcare settings.

• It provides the convenience of being treated by expert professionals continuously while being at home, with better accuracy.

• Some examples of data which can be monitored are weight, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, heart rate, electrocardiogram and blood oxygen levels.

• It uses varies from monitoring SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) in infants to memory loss in elderly people. It can be greatly useful for a patient with mobility issues, post-surgery patients, elderly patients etc.

HOSPITAL OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT:

• IoT can be used to create an automated, centralized database management system that can track all the documentation, optimize queues and track hospital staff and patients through their mobile devices.

• Some IoT innovations that are facilitating operations management in hospitals are:- Auto-bed, RIFD.

GLUCOSE MONITORING:

• Testing your blood sugar levels is one of the best ways to understand your diabetes and how different foods, medications, and activities affect your diabetes.

• Keeping track of your blood glucose can help you and your doctor makes a plan to manage this condition.

CONNECTED INHALER:

• The IoT based inhalers are sensors that act as a clip on to existing inhalers.

• It has a GPS extension which allows it to track when and where the puffs are taken by the patients.

• These sensors are linked with an app that the patient needs to install on their smartphone. This information is readily conversed to the app by the sensors via Bluetooth on the smartphone or plug-in hub.

• The connected inhalers enable the physicians to effectively monitor the inhalation technique and frequency capturing factors such as inhalation volume, stimulus time, as well as the patient’s usage of the inhaler.

• Asthma is a condition that impacts hundreds of millions of people globally. Connected inhalers are a form of smart technology that is giving people living with asthma control over their symptoms and treatment.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 👈                          👉 Part 5, Part 6, Part 7