The IOT healthcare sector
Seventeen years ago, in a meeting with a potential investor, I recall being told “you are way ahead of your time no one will use this tools and system” A polite way to say go away.
Perhaps there was some truth to his statement, but we moved on anyway, got the company funded GPRS came and mobile speeds enabled a bit faster connectivity which made access easier to connect our applications to various systems in healthcare facilities, security was already a concern back then. I recall meeting with the Swedish authorities in order to get our encryption approved especially since it related to patient data.
Healthcare technology and especially Nanotechnology has evolved dramatically research and projects at world-class facilities like the INL – International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Braga, Portugal provides a platform for development of game-changing NanoSensors, NanoParticles which with the right connectivity, automation, analytics,
orchestration and security of the data being transported will catapult and enhance the benefits Nano IoT provides.
Functional Medicine will be the first line of defense by treating our guts and understanding the complexity of the Biota and how it is like a brain, and our gut health can affect the rest of our bodies, AI based questionnaires will help simplify diagnosis. Usage Data Management Platforms will become a critical piece on this entire ecosystem of tools.
We ill understand that eventually saving our feces in CryoStorage can potentially save our lives one day used to restore our intestinal flora.
The IOT healthcare sector is expected to reach 160 Billion by 2020 according to various analysts.
Doctors can begin the triage of patient’s real-time with HD video and communications feed in transit to a trauma facility. Nano-Sensor Particles can be injected into patients with high risks of strokes and these connected particles can produce alarms providing a window of opportunity to react prior to a stroke taking place.
Drones can be dispatched with defibrillators, insulin, antivenin, and life-saving equipment, soon quad drones will carry a patient and up to two paramedics.
Monitoring devices and textiles can be used to relay vitals to nursing and specialist staff, reducing cost and inefficiencies.
Preventing downtime of hospital equipment and in operating rooms, anesthesia, dialysis,
heart-lung machines, displays, sterilizing ultrasound, x-ray, Etc.
Drug treatment management and analytics will be a huge benefit; drug-related deaths due to prescription errors or interactions are still the cause of high mortality rates.
Nanobots and other types of non-invasive surgical treatments will become the norm, Body Scans, 3D printed organs, all will require some form of connectivity and generate data to be analyzed.
Implanted chips, tags, and low-frequency subcutaneous devices. Bacterial air sampling and monitoring devices to prevent or reduce hospital-acquired infections. Synthetic molecular biology to take out the proteins in viruses that makes us sick and replaced by another protein that kills cancer cells instead. Gene sequencing and manipulation to treat malign disorders.
Summary of benefits:
· Better and cost-effective patient monitoring
· Pro-active drug management and analytics
· Augmented Equipment monitoring and asset tracking
· Preventive medicine and wellness
· None or less invasive surgical procedures
· More affordable drug treatments due to more efficient development
What are the stumbling blocks in implementation?
· Regulation
· The fact that in many countries, healthcare facilities profit from a lessor non efficient
system
My two partners and I founded in 1999 the NGS Group a pioneer in the software and healthcare M2M connectivity when it was called Telematics. We were the first company to enable prescriptions over mobile technology in order to prevent overdose and potentially deadly drug interactions. We were first to develop a software system to eliminate inefficiencies and human error in the manual data entry of patient journals when transfers to another hospital were required, basically, a protocol converter to correlate and aggregate data from system to system amongst care provider facilities.
We also monitored pacemakers using Bluetooth technology, and many other monitoring devices for sleep apnea, neonatal, elderly care, epilepsy, subcutaneous insulin testing, Etc. We took the company public on the Stockholm Stock Exchange.
