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Adam Chai Professor Fox INFO-I423 October 19, 2020 Internet of Medical Things

Without technology, many common healthcare visits would not exist and the quality of treatment a person can receive will greatly diminish. Today, the Internet of medical things, or IoMT, are embedded within our healthcare system greatly reducing costs, increasing effectiveness, and creating unique solutions. Specifically, the internet of medical things is a network of medical device connected to a provider’s computer system (“Sciencedirect.”) The IoMT is a growing market currently valued at, $44.5 billion in 2018 and is projected to grow to $254.2 billion in 2026 (“Healthmagazine”). As the IoMT grows throughout the world more issues arise from inherent issues within the system such as cloud attacks, straining existing networks, and managing large volumes of data (“Dzone”). The IoMT has brought a lot of great change to the healthcare industry but there are still many problems this system has to solve.

Devices within the IoMT is bringing a big change to the quality of healthcare patients are receiving. Some devices that are at the forefront of this movement are consumer health wearables and clinical-grade wearables (“AABME”). Consumer health wearables include, “…consumer-grade devices for personal wellness or fitness, such as activity trackers, bands, wristbands, sports watches, and smart garments,” most of these devices are not approved by health authorities but are endorsed by experts (“AABME”). Typically, the functions of these wearables range from are tracking and analyzing movements during the day such as heart rates, pedometer, and sleep rates. A recent example of an IoMT device that has been breaking the news is the Oura smart ring. Due to Covid-19 the NBA was shut down for several months but was able to restart within a bubble setting within Disney World. One condition the NBA was able to restart was all players had to wear the Oura smart ring. The Oura smart ring can predict Covid-19 symptoms within 3 days in advance with a 90% accuracy. This ring functions similarly to other health wearables various functions include measuring temperature, respiratory functions and heart rate, and personalized insights. The Oura ring can function this way due to its infrared light photoplethysmography which is better than green light LEDs within other wearables (“Oura”). Devices such as the Oura smart ring are great advancements for IoMT and will improve within the future.

By utilizing IoMT healthcare providers are switching their storage to cloud-based storage. Data retrieved from IoMT devices and systems are a cause for concern. In 2018, 15 million patient records were affected by hackers and are predicted to increase in the following years (“getrefferralmd”). In fact, 25% of all data breaches within a year are related to hospitals and healthcare facilities (“getrefferalmd”). Hackers are targeting healthcare facilities because of a lack of security and untrained staff. Outside of hacking attacks, another issue from IoMT systems are straining existing networks. Since more data about patients is increasingly becoming greater storing this data is causing various issues. Besides security concerns having a lot of data within the patient’s database it is causing bottlenecks that make it take longer to retrieve data about the patient. Bottlenecks within processes are the slowest part within a critical path that needs to be completed to finish the process. Having larger than before bottlenecks it can be more dangerous for patients when they need to have their records promptly. With larger amounts of data, there also needs to be a way to process the information within the system. Several approaches to solving this issue are creating new machine learning and advanced algorithms that can solve these issues. Although many issues are facing the IoMT the advancements and quality of treatment patients can receive now and in the future is worth the costs.

Currently, the IoMT still needs many improvements before it can be an industry-wide standard. The IoMT has many benefits ranging from receiving more data from patients, treating complicated issues, and detecting diseases in real-time. NBA players wearing the Oura smart ring is a practical usage for the new technology and when these devices can become cheaper many more people will start using them. If everyone had advanced technology that can detect many different health problems our healthcare system will be a lot safer and there will be fewer problems. Sadly, there are still many security issues and data hospitals cannot handle yet. The status of the IoMT is it is not safe enough to use yet but in the future, it will be used in every hospital.

Works Cited: Al-Turjman, Fadi, et al. “Intelligence in the Internet of Medical Things Era: A Systematic Review of Current and Future Trends.” Computer Communications, Elsevier, 19 Dec. 2019, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0140366419313337. Andrew, Steger.” Technology Solutions That Drive Healthcare, 1 May 2019, healthtechmagazine.net/article/2020/01/how-internet-medical-things-impacting-healthcare-perfcon. Bunnell, Randolph. “Top Issues Facing Internet of Medical Things and How to Solve Them - DZone IoT.” Dzone.com, DZone, 10 July 2019, dzone.com/articles/main-issues-of-internet-of-medical-things-and-how. “Internet of Medical Things Revolutionizing Healthcare.” The Alliance of Advanced BioMedical Engineering, aabme.asme.org/posts/internet-of-medical-things-revolutionizing-healthcare. “Why Are Hackers Targeting Hospitals?” ReferralMD, 9 Oct. 2019, getreferralmd.com/2019/10/why-are-hackers-targeting-hospitals/.