DIGITAL HEALTH

WRITTEN BY : LEILA HAWKINS

In its early days , IoT ' s usage in healthcare was focused on the maintenance and control of large medical machines , enabling suppliers to monitor the machines remotely and ensure they kept running .

In time people realised the additional value this type of connectivity could bring to healthcare . What if it could allow doctors to monitor patients from within their homes ?

There are a number of conditions for which this is particularly suitable . One is sleep apnoea , a potentially dangerous disorder where breathing stops and starts while someone is sleeping . A remote device can monitor their sleep and alert a medical professional if they stop breathing .

Heart disease is another area . " We started a big project with Medtronic on pacemakers a few years ago ", Brenneis explains . " Pacemakers inside the body do not have cellular connectivity . They connect through short-range wireless connectivity . They send their data to a bedside device which has Vodafone connectivity built-in , and that sends the data to the doctor or the hospital ."

The purpose of this is twofold . " With pacemakers , you always need to know the battery ' s status , so it transmits this information as well as critical information about the patient ' s heart behaviour . If there ' s a problem , someone can be called to exchange the battery , or a doctor can be alerted if the patient is at risk ."

IoT has also been transformative for people with diabetes . " We ' re seeing more generic remote monitoring applications for doctors that don ' t only offer video conferencing , but provide the patient with a system at home where relatively simple things like weight , temperature or blood pressure are connected to a device that is taking all these measurements automatically , and sending them to a doctor ."

Remote monitoring is especially useful for the elderly as it removes the need to type all this data by hand and reduces trips to the doctor . " This is a solution we built in Greece for people living on the Greek islands . There are a lot of older people living there , but there are not many doctors . It ' s really helping improve lives there ", Brenneis says .

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