IoT In Home Health Care
IoT in home healthcare refers to the use of internet-connected devices (IoT) to remotely monitor and manage a patient's health conditions within their own home, allowing for continuous data collection and timely interventions by healthcare providers, often including vital signs, medication adherence, and activity levels, without requiring frequent in-person visits.
Key aspects of IoT in home healthcare
Remote patient monitoring is the core function, where devices like wearable trackers, blood pressure monitors, glucose meters, and smart scales collect patient data and transmit it to healthcare providers in a near real-time for analysis,intervention and research.
Glucose monitoring (BGL):
For the more than 30 million Americans with diabetes, glucose monitoring has traditionally been difficult. Not only is it inconvenient to have to check glucose levels and manually record results, but doing so reports a patient’s glucose levels only at the exact time the test is provided. If levels fluctuate widely, periodic testing may not be sufficient to detect a problem. PlatformsIoT onboarded IoT devices do help address these challenges by providing continuous, automatic monitoring of glucose levels in patients. Glucose monitoring devices eliminate the need to keep records manually, and they can alert patients when glucose levels are problematic.
Heart-rate monitoring (ECG):
Periodic heart rate checks don’t guard against rapid fluctuations in heart rates, and conventional devices for continuous cardiac monitoring used in hospitals require patients to be attached to wired machines constantly, impairing their mobility.
PlatformsIoT has onboarded a variety of small IoT devices that are available for heart rate monitoring, freeing patients to move around as they like while ensuring that their hearts are monitored continuously. Guaranteeing ultra-accurate results remains somewhat of a challenge, but most onboarded devices can deliver accuracy rates of about 90 percent or better.
Oxygen Level Monitors:
PlatformsIoT has onboarded a variety of off the shelf and hospital grade oxymeters. Frequent oxygen saturation level monitors can indicate sudden onset of gradual onset of respiratory conditions that could be life threatening. Aided by AI, providers can spot and intervene early and rapidly.
Oxygen Tank Monitors:
Supplying and maintaining home oxygen for certain types of patients is one of the most challenging functions in home health care. PlatformsIoT onboarded oxygen suppliers not only can monitor the current oxygen levels, but also predict refill and plan their routes in the most optimal way. Continuous data analysis by the in house developed algorithms predict replacement window based on patient usage and usage history.
Connected inhalers:
Conditions such as asthma or COPD often involve attacks that come on suddenly, with little warning. PlatformsIoT has onboarded IoT-connected inhalers that can help patients by monitoring the frequency of attacks, as well as collecting data from the environment to help healthcare providers understand what triggered an attack.
In addition, connected inhalers can alert patients when they leave inhalers at home, placing them at risk of suffering an attack without their inhaler present, or when they use the inhaler improperly.
Weight watchers:
PlatformsIoT has onboarded a variety of scales with builtin connectivity. Simply collecting patient weight in frequent intervals can indicate an onset or other symptoms. The data is also invaluable for clinical studies as it provides valuable insight into chronic conditions.
Activity monitoring:
PlatformsIoT onboarded sensors can track a patient's movement patterns, providing insights into their mobility and potential risks.
Environmental monitoring:
Onboarded and in house developed environmental conditions monitoring sensors sensors can monitor factors like temperature, humidity, and air quality in the home, which can be important for managing certain health conditions.
Improved patient care
Continuous monitoring allows for early detection of health issues and faster response to changes in patient condition.
Reduced healthcare costs:
By preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and enabling proactive management, IoT can lower overall healthcare expenses. Just like early diagnosis, continuous monitoring can significantly lower cost of care while drastically improving patient outcome. With integrated AI tools providers can be aided by prompting an area of attention. For example continuous curve fitting analysis can identify atrial fibrillation signs and prompt providers attention.
Enhanced patient autonomy:
Patients can manage their health more actively with the ability to monitor their own data and communicate with providers remotely. In person visits are stressful, expensive and often do not provide detailed information for medical providers. PlatformsIoT engineering team works real hard to reduce the patient friction by optimizing connectivity and removing repeated and unnecessary networking tasks. At PlatformsIoT patient autonomy starts with us. We start with it and nit the other way around.
Challenges of IoT in home healthcare
Data privacy and security:
Ensuring patient data is protected from unauthorized access is crucial. Faceless data collection is the only certain way to assure complete privacy. We collect only sensor data without any patient identifying information. At no time on PlatformsIoT PaaS we store patient information.
Device interoperability:
Different devices from various manufacturers need to be able to communicate effectively with each other. Therefore, we use bi directional communication utilizing the “network-only-in-cloude” architectural approach. Invented in house and patented, the design pattern is the only meaningful solution to interoperability problems prominent in the healthcare industry. PlatformsIoT is the only known PaaS that allows such synergy. Our Internet Of Everything approach is unique and unprecedented.