The race is on. A few months ago, Apple set pulses racing with the launch of its new HealthKit application – a multi-purposing, data-aggregating hub for health and wellness data from multiple platforms, sensors and partners, says Martin Walshaw, senior engineer at F5 Networks.
Fellow behemoth Google is also limbering up to enter the healthcare fray with Google Fit, which is similarly questing for an integrated, networked approach to diagnostics by getting wearables and other data-yielding devices to engage in constructive dialogue.
Both have aspirations to sync with the wider healthcare ecosystem, with Apple already considering how the HealthKit can benefit 21st century doctors and patients alike.
These are of course just the latest – albeit among the most compelling – additions to the Internet of Things’ (IoT’s) sprawling and interconnected hospital wing. Hardly a day goes by without arrays of shiny new kit coming online; recent solutions gaining the “smart” prefix include everything from diapers and insulin monitors to sensors tracking whether medication is adequately ingested and absorbed.
The big hope for healthcare providers worldwide is that hospitals stand to benefit from an operational efficiency shot in the arm with IoT as an ally on the ward.
Remote monitoring and support can slash critical equipment downtime, real-time monitoring ensures supplies never run out or are over-supplied, and doctors can schedule their time with unprecedented precision.
The big winners will be those that master the network, integrating context-aware technology, the ability to tame and mine galactic tsunamis of big data – imagine the widespread roll-out of electronic medical records alone – and achieve secure implementations of cloud computing. According to research firm Markets and Markets, the global healthcare sector market for the latter could grow to nearly $5,4-billion by 2017.
As the healthcare sector seeks to jump on the IoT bandwagon in earnest, it will inevitably have to steel itself for new dimensions in real-time data security. Cloud and smart device adoption will require massive shifts in accountability and policy development, and the flow of data has to be rapid, robust and secure.
In an ideal world, the healthcare sector will evolve to be more agile, adaptable and attuned to the flourishing application economy.
This means moving away from managing traditional reliability models to a more strategic, service-based approach focusing on application-level service provisioning, automation and orchestration. It will also mean creating, deploying, modifying and extending services quickly to address variables impacting the security, reliability and performance of applications and networks.
While the transformational journey may seem daunting in scale, the IoT’s burgeoning healthcare compatibility represents a thrilling and powerfully humanised convergence of technologies. Where we once only monitored, we will soon be able to predict and counsel before issues arise. Where high-tech care and consultancy were once confined to the clinic, they are now entering our homes and reaching developing countries from afar.
These are game-changing developments in every sense of the word, and they are happening today. Things (and life as we know it) can only get better.