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The modern healthcare system is capable of great things, and you have certainly seen that on display as of late. When healthcare facilities are adequately equipped, miracles can happen. While medical tech is often very expensive, the value it adds to the world is hard to deny. Technology greatly influences how medical facilities operate for a variety of reasons, and IoT technology has the power to help doctors help their patients.
The Internet of Things refers to the use of internet connectivity to enable new features in devices that are not ordinarily connected to the internet. IoT healthcare solutions are the next in a long line of advancements that have the potential to drastically improve the efficacy of medical practice. IoT technology is generally encouraged in environments that are dense with devices and data, because it is at its strongest when consolidating data across those devices, and that heavily applies in the field of medicine.
Monitoring Vitals and Expanding Reach
IoT devices have the capacity to create a network of interconnected devices that can allow the vitals of several patients to be monitored remotely, for example. This vastly increases the efficiency of treating many patients at once, something that doctors are routinely required to do without the means to do so effectively. It can also enable doctors to keep track of their patients’ well being in between appointments via wearable devices and video conferencing in order to better diagnose and treat long term medical problems. In a nutshell, IoT technology has incredible potential to save doctors crucial time in dealing with patients so that no one gets left behind when personnel are stretched thin.
Refining the Diagnostic Process
However, there are other applications of this technology in medical situations. By feeding patients’ vitals into a central hub, you will almost certainly be consolidating that data with your patients’ other information, such as medical history, their reported symptoms, etc. While this is incredibly useful for data analysis at the hands of medical personnel themselves, you can also employ the use of algorithmic analysis in order to draw diagnosis conclusions much more quickly and much more accurately. An algorithm can allow your devices to work in concert together to automatically compare and contrast your patients information with a database of known medical conditions in order to determine your patients’ possible condition, as well as known methods of testing and treatment.
Keeping Track of Moving Parts
IoT technology can also enable various features that make the operations in a medical setting run much more smoothly. For example, IoT devices can be used to keep track of various pieces of equipment in order to make sure the right tools are always available, despite constantly being shuffled around. Likewise, the tracking of certain at risk patients could save time in locating them if something is suspected to have happened to them, and it can also provide confirmation of their vitals in order to determine their level of safety.
Improving Infrastructure
There are a dizzying number of clerical processes that take place in the average hospital, and IoT technology has solutions. The process of checking into a hospital typically entails reciting a set of facts about your face to multiple staff members in order for them to obtain the information and verify it, for example, and having IoT devices can enable that information to spread more quickly and be referenced more easily. It can even start with facial recognition prompting your information to be pulled as a part of the check in process, or even sooner, via smart cameras.
Advances in technology are always welcome in the world of medicine. Hospitals are consistently in need of better methods and machines in order to save lives, and IoT technology can vastly improve the workflow in this often hectic and high stakes environment.