Wearable Devices and IT Infrastructure

The number of medical wearable devices is expected to grow as more healthcare organizations adapt the Internet of Things (IoT). Projections are that the global medical wearable device market will reach over $12 billion by 2021 from $5 billion in 2017.

The growth of the medical wearable device market is due to the technological advancements of medical devices along with the increased number of compatible IoT apps being developed for wearable devices. Wearables are increasingly being used to develop greater care coordination, collaboration and productivity as well as improve patient welfare by encouraging more proactive behavior because of data driven insights.

Fitness wearable devices continue to grow in popularity, increasingly, patients are willing to use them to give clinicians better insight into their daily activities to better diagnose and treat conditions.

Developers are building applications for the evolving technology that assists healthcare organizations know a patient better from the data that these wearable apps and devices collect.The data collected by patient wearables continue to give personnel in a patient’s circle of care clearer insight into diagnosing and treating medical conditions.

While wearables offer the healthcare industry many benefits, the high cost of wearable devices and data security concerns continue to be areas that need to be addressed in order to drive the scale and pace of adoption.

As the healthcare IoT continues to grow, organizations must evaluate their IT infrastructure to handle these new types of devices and the data they collect.

Security: IoT and wearable security is relatively new to IT security in healthcare organizations. The devices need to be able to access the network and data center resources, however they do not behave in the same way as smartphones and other more traditional mobile devices and need to be addressed as such.

Network layer security is vital for wearable security as patient devices will be exchanging information with the network. Network layer security allows IT staff to segment services for better network visibility of traffic patterns. This give IT better control over wearable devices accessing the network.

Data: Along with security updates, organization also need to consider the data wearable and IoT devices collect. In order for patients and clinicians to benefit from individual data collected with IoT wearable devices, the data needs to be integrated into the patient’s record in a format compatible with the organization's EHR technology so an end user can easily view and make sense of the data collected (informed decisions driven by meaningful insights).

Infrastructure: Additionally, organizations need to re-assess the design of their wireless networks and determine if they can handle an increased number of devices connecting to the network. And, they should evaluate existing and planned guest networks to be sure that the connection is secure and that patient devices don’t have access to the main healthcare network.

IoT and wearable solutions allow healthcare organizations to collect and assess data that can improve patient care and operations, but a successful deployment depends heavily on the organization’s IT infrastructure and its ability to optimally support an IoT solution. Optimized service delivery models that maximize the benefits of these emerging technologies, minimize the overall cost and improve the delivery of services should be integral to new/refresh IT plans & strategies.