The Essential Guide: Exploring the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
Mohamed Kahna
Digital Health Expert | Medical Marketing Manager| Surgical Technologist | Medical Innovator || Helping doctors, nurses & medical companies THRIVE??
The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown massively in recent years, and it’s starting to have an impact on nearly every aspect of our everyday lives.
We’ve already written?a guide to IoT in general, but we wanted to go a step further, and delve into one of the fastest-growing sectors of the IoT market: the Internet of Medical Things?–?also known as IoMT.
IoMT revenues reached?$24 billion?worldwide in 2016, and this number is projected to increase to?$135 billion?by 2025. Connected technologies can completely transform the healthcare industry, bringing benefits to patients, families, physicians, hospitals and even insurance companies.
Throughout this guide, we’ve looked at the many types and applications of IoMT, explored the potential of smart healthcare facilities, and considered some of the key advantages and challenges of using this kind of technology in the healthcare sector. We’ve also had a think about what IoMT might look like in the future, as this is clearly an industry with huge potential.
As always with our guides, you can have a read through the whole thing, or just skip to the parts that you’re most interested in. If you have any questions about IoMT or IoT in general, please feel free to?get in touch with us today.
IoMT: the basics
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the global network of physical assets – ‘things’, like sensors and devices – that are connected by the internet. These ‘things’ are used to monitor the world around them and to collect and exchange the resulting data.
The key thing about these assets is that they can ‘talk’ to each other over the internet: this is what makes them ‘smart’. Some ‘things’ collect and send information, some receive information and act upon it, and some can do both. The data that is collected and analysed by IoT can help us make more informed, efficient and meaningful decisions.
Technically, any device connected to the internet is part of the Internet of Things. According to?data from IoT Analytics, there are over 7 billion internet-connected devices, and that number is growing exponentially. This is a big money game: according to Intel, the global IoT market is set to hit?$6.2 trillion by 2025.
There are so many types and applications of IoT that it can be confusing to explain exactly how it works. To make things simple, we’ve broken it down into the four key stages that make up a successful IoT deployment.?
IoT is a powerful, long-term approach that can bring a huge range of benefits to any individual or organisation. As we continue to connect more and more ‘things’, we can find smart solutions to huge global challenges.
Now we’ve covered the basics of IoT, it’s time to delve into the main topic to this guide is dedicated to: IoMT.
What is IoMT?
Put simply, The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is the use of IoT in the healthcare sector.?
It consists of medical devices, platforms and other tools – anything from connected inhalers to wearable biosensors – all of which can have a huge impact on health outcomes.
The rise of IoMT has been driven by a huge increase in the number of connected medical devices that are able to generate, collect, analyse and transmit data. And this growth is showing no signs of slowing: the IoMT market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of?21.0%?between 2020 and 2025.
Why has IoMT become so important?
With constant advances in technology, IoMT has shown its potential to redefine healthcare. Goldman Sachs estimates that IoMT will save the US healthcare industry?$300 billion?annually, mostly through remote patient monitoring and improved medication adherence.?
With access to real-time data from connected medical devices, IoMT enables healthcare professionals to reach actionable conclusions more quickly and reliably. Other benefits include:
Up until now, the general approach to healthcare has mostly been reactive. Going forwards, IoMT, combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning, can help to create a personalised, proactive, preventative and predictive care plan. Pretty exciting, eh?
What are the main types of IoMT?
There are loads of different types of IoMT that are doing a great job streamlining the healthcare sector.?
Read on for some more in-depth explanations of what these different types of IoMT entail.
1. In-home IoMT
In-home IoMT allows people to transmit medical data from their home to other locations, such as their primary care provider or a hospital.?
There are loads of ways it can be used, so we’ve picked three examples to make it clear how beneficial it can be.
Remote healthcare has become extremely important during the pandemic, and it seems likely that there will be an increase in in-home IoMT going forwards.
2. On-body IoMT
On-body IoMT involves wearable medical devices that are connected to remote tracking or monitoring systems.?
Unlike in-home IoMT, on-body IoMT can be used outside of the home as people go about their daily lives. It can be split into two key categories: consumer and clinical on-body IoMT devices.
Consumer on-body IoMT devices can be bought by anyone and used to track standard health metrics, and even identify warning signs for more serious health conditions. As well as being great for personal use, data can also be shared with healthcare providers if necessary.?A great example of this is smart watches, which have become very popular in recent years.
Clinical on-body IoMT devices are very similar consumer devices but include a much bigger selection of sensor options. For example, glucose sensors can be worn by diabetic patients to alert them to any fluctuations in glucose levels. By sharing data directly with a patient’s doctor, these devices facilitate faster and more accurate treatment.?
The advantages of on-body IoMT devices are plenty:
3. Community IoMT
Community IoMT is the use of IoMT devices throughout a broader geographic area. This could involve:?
By ensuring accurate data can be collected, assessed, and responded to accordingly, community IoMT has the potential to improve care across a wide range of locations.
4. In-hospital IoMT
One of the most common and useful places that IoMT devices are used is, unsurprisingly, in hospitals. They increase efficiency, improve outcomes, and provide real-time data on things that can quickly become a matter of life or death.
Common uses of in-hospital IoMT include:
What are the key applications of IoMT?
As you’re probably starting to realise, the applications of IoMT are many and varied. As time goes by, it’s likely that we will find even more uses for IoT in the healthcare sector.
For the purposes of this guide, we’ve decided to focus on the following broad categories:
1. Remote care
Remote patient monitoring is probably the most common application of IoMT.
As we’ve already mentioned, IoT devices can automatically collect key health metrics like heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature from patients who are not physically present in a healthcare facility.??
This data is then forwarded to a software platform where healthcare professionals and/or patients can view it. Things get even smarter when algorithms are used to analyse the data and recommend treatments or generate alerts so that any necessary action can be taken.
A major challenge with remote patient monitoring is making sure that the highly personal data that IoT devices collect is completely private.
If elderly people live without a relative or carer nearby, issues can quickly arise if they experience an accident, like a fall, and aren’t able to get assistance, or if they forget to take their medication.
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Luckily, IoMT is on hand to offer smart solutions that allow the elderly to maintain a level of independence, while making sure they’re safe in the case of an emergency. With the catchphrase #GrowOldDisgracefully,?Alcove?is leading the way when it comes to using smart technology to make independent living possible.?
IoMT is also enabling the creation of dedicated virtual hospitals, where outpatient and long-term care can be delivered remotely by healthcare professionals to patients in their homes. This can be hugely beneficial as it helps to free up vital bed space for patients who need more intensive in-person care.
2. Optimising treatment
The diagnosis and treatment of diseases is becoming increasingly intelligent with the rise of new technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Doctors can give expert advice based on algorithms to improve the accuracy of diagnosis, reduce the incidence of missed diagnosis and misdiagnosis, and allow patients to receive timely and appropriate medical treatment.
Virtual assistants are not actual entities, but smart algorithms. They rely on big data to obtain information sources, communicate with users through techniques like speech recognition, and then respond according to a user's needs.
Robotic surgery allows doctors to perform complex procedures with more precision, flexibility and control than is possible with conventional methods.
By deploying small IoT devices inside the human body, surgery can become far less invasive, which means:
There are several well-known robot systems that are already in use, including the?da Vinci system, the?Sensei X robotic catheter system, and the?Flex? Robotic System.
IoMT facilitates the automatic screening of the effects of both drugs and targets, which can massively increase the speed of drug development.?
Through smart pre-screening, the number of drug molecules that actually need to be screened can be reduced. Artificial intelligence systems then help to collect the latest scientific data in real time and optimise or correct the screening process.
IoMT can also:
Most of the applications of IoMT we’ve spoken about so far are all about making life easier for patients and doctors, but there are also some very useful ones for health insurance companies.?
Health monitoring devices bring transparency between insurers and customers in the underwriting, pricing, claims handling, and risk assessment processes.?
3. Smart devices
Smart watches weren’t originally designed to be medical devices, but they are increasingly becoming powerful healthcare tools. This is all thanks to a range of applications and features that have been added to them by manufacturers like Apple, Google and Samsung, including:
Smart thermometers and the apps that come with them help users determine how to treat illnesses by offering advice based on other factors like age and other symptoms.?
This is particularly valuable for parents of young children, who might be unsure how serious an illness is or what symptoms they should be keeping an eye out for.?
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,?Kinsa?decided to publish the anonymised, aggregated data from its smart thermometer network across the United States. A map showed clusters of high temperatures that could potentially indicate the outbreak of the virus in a given area.
According to the Royal College of Physicians,?two in three deaths?from asthma could be prevented with measures like personal asthma plans for patients, timely reviews of care and prescription of more suitable medication.
Connected inhalers help patients with respiratory diseases like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to track their medication use and can send alerts to remind them to take a dose when needed. Other benefits include:
Connected inhalers will also generate usage reports that can be shared with a doctor to optimise treatment plans.
Monitoring heart rates can be pretty challenging, even when patients are in healthcare facilities.?
Periodic heart rate checks don’t always catch rapid fluctuations in heart rates, and conventional devices for continuous monitoring mean that patients need to be attached to wired machines constantly, limiting their mobility.
How can we increase IoMT security?
There are lots of variables at play when it comes to IoMT security, and there’s no easy way to secure every type of medical device against every type of threat.?
However, a basic first step is to make sure you know which medical devices exist on your network, and the different sorts of threats that may impact them.?
We’ve highlighted seven key things that should also be taken into consideration.?
Technology manufacturers need to use best practice industry guidelines around security, and administrators should use the latest encryption protocols, using unique and complex passwords for access and validating the SSL certificates of remote systems.
Healthcare facilities should implement a zero trust network security model. This means that communication between devices is controlled by strict access control and authentication, ensuring traffic is always coming from where you think it is.?
Establishing a unified technical standard is key to achieve maximum compatibility between different devices and platforms. This will help to improve data integrity and remove barriers to information exchange.?
Legislation is the most practical way to guarantee the privacy of relevant systems and make smart healthcare more secure.
As the industry grows, there’s an opportunity to accelerate the maturity and stability of IoMT technologies through upgrades. It’s important that professionals from relevant fields work together to clarify the development goals of IoMT.
Technology providers need to demonstrate their commitment to privacy and anonymity when it comes to handling user data. It’s essential that they can show that they are only using it for strictly necessary purposes, and doing everything they can to maintain user privacy.
On the flip side of the coin, consumers should make sure they are aware of the data they are sharing and how it might be used by the company in question.?
Conclusion
oMT is an essential part of next-generation healthcare. Connected devices and systems will allow the industry to move from a reactive and ad-hoc model of care, to one that is predictive, preventative and holistic.
And in the coming years, the growth of artificial intelligence and machine learning will only make the potential of IoMT even more exciting. We will hopefully get to a point where we’ve mastered these systems for the treatment of disease and delivery of therapy, and we can begin to use technology to enhance the lives of already healthy individuals.
As IoMT continues to grow, it will pave the way for innovative new technologies, ultimately improving care and saving lives. And whenever we discover new advances in IoMT, we will be sure to add them to this guide, so make sure you bookmark it so that you don’t miss our updates!?