Internet of Things (IoT) is the technology breakthrough of the last few years that has managed to significantly influence healthcare software development. IoT provides access to invaluable information about patients’ health condition, ensure remote treatment, reduce the cost of medical help, and creates new opportunities on how to streamline and improve services. Below are the top 3 areas where IoT is applied in the healthcare industry.
Smart hospitals
There are a lot of problems that any hospital faces every day: lots of paperwork, ongoing frustrating queues, problems with patient logistics, difficulties with managing chronic patients, and more. Doctors and nurses are subjected to constant working overloads which has a terrible impact on providing medical care. All these problems can be addressed with the help of IoT solutions.
Smart hospital is a new type of medical institutions that can automate, streamline and modernize the majority of the processes. Huge paper archives can be easily replaced by a centralized digital database, which can be further improved in terms of reliability with the help of blockchain and smart contracts. There also can be a single hospital system that allows controlling queues and track employees via smartphones. All the equipment can also be monitored and controlled remotely by means of IoT sensors.
Such innovations in healthcare software development can help significantly reduce hospital deprecation expenses and make communication between patients and hospital staff more effective. The overall productivity of the medical services will also increase because of the ability of intelligent sensors to immediately recognize health problems that would otherwise require months of live doctor diagnostics.
Connected devices
Today there exist a lot of IoT devices that significantly improve patient care by providing remote health control. When connected to the Internet, all these ordinary devices can accurately collect valuable data and provide additional understanding of symptoms and tendencies. All these sensors can immediately send real-time alerts in case of emergency thus saving lives. Below are just a small number of already existing connected health devices:
• fetal monitors,
• electrocardiograms,
• temperature monitors,
• blood glucose levels,
• ingestible sensors,
• connected inhalers.
Telemedicine
With various wearable devices and telemedicine, combating chronic diseases is much easier and effective. Chronic conditions should be monitored and analyzed over a long period of time and here IoT comes to the aid. All the sensors can send information directly to the doctor and the treatment can be adjusted promptly.
Remote patient monitoring allows cutting the doctor’s appointments list, minimize the queues in clinics, save more time and money for patients with similar efficiency of treatment.
Final thoughts
The development and integration of IoT software is an important part of healthcare software development. And modern clinics in their turn do their best to adopt this technology to ensure better patient care. The expenses for the Internet of Things are expected to have reached $1 trillion by 2025. And this fact gives us hope for having more accessible and personalized medical care for everyone.