Published on 12/14/2016 | Use Cases
Healthcare is one of the world’s biggest economic challenges. The growing population will place further strain on healthcare systems. In 2010, there were 207 million people over 75 years of age worldwide. This figure will rise to 265 million by 2020. As healthcare system demands increase in pace with the aging population, a significantly higher burden is being placed on healthcare systems. Increasingly, these solutions should be ―value for money and within healthcare budgets. With the aging population wanting to continue living independently at home, they are looking to assisted living solutions for help for self and elders.
With a growing aging population and the prevalence of chronic diseases across the world, there is an urgent need to find new ways to improve patient outcomes, increase access to care, and reduce the cost so that all segments of the society can afford a medical care. With the advancements in sensor technology & M2M, the ubiquitous availability of cellular technology like 3G & 4G, and falling costs of communication devices are opening up new channels for improving patient care and quality of life. Using seamless, continuous remote patient health monitoring, healthcare providers, insurance payers, and the government are looking to significantly alter how care is provided to patients, while reducing cost of care at the same time.
Machine to machine (M2M) is a broad label that can be used to describe any technology that enables networked devices to exchange information and perform actions without the manual assistance of humans. M2M communication is often used for remote monitoring. Key components of a M2M system include sensors, RFID, a Wi-Fi or cellular communications link and autonomic computing software programmed to help a networked device interpret data and make decisions.
The most well-known type of M2M communication is telemetry, which has been used since the early part of the last century to transmit operational data. Pioneers in telemetrics first used telephone lines, and later on, radio waves to transmit performance measurements gathered from monitoring instruments in remote locations. The Internet and improved standards for wireless technology have expanded the role of telemetry from pure science, engineering and manufacturing to healthcare.
In healthcare specifically, M2M applications have the potential to:
1. Reduce healthcare costs by allowing clinical staff to remotely work together and instantly access patient data.
2. Serve a growing population of patients with chronic illnesses by allowing physicians to remotely monitor the patient’s long term health & out of hospital care.
3. Improve diagnoses by bringing together data from disparate devices (e.g. monitors, images, therapeutic devices) over time to form a complete picture of a single patient’s health status.
4. Improve functionality and maintenance of medical equipments.
5. Significantly improving the functioning of healthcare ICT systems by improving information sharing wirelessly.
6. Monitor the consumption of medicines on time.
7. Reduce the time to settle the insurance claim and admission for insured persons.
8. Transform the data generated in an ambulance during the transit to the hospitals and doctors in real time, thereby making the emergency care more efficient. In most of the cases, the ambulance and the ICT system of hospitals have difficulty in integrating and exchanging information.
In India particularly, M2M can also help in monitoring the functioning of the rural healthcare units and can make the skilled doctors available remotely and make the healthcare more affordable. The success of any healthcare program depends on the awareness about the diseases, and M2M can help improving the skills of staffs and bring more awareness about the latest diseases spread in the nearby areas.
Connected devices can also help healthcare providers track their assets in the field and reduce the risk of theft. M2M-enabled devices can help in monitoring medical equipment.
Using live performance data to spot early signs that maintenance is required, avoiding downtime caused by equipment failure.
Check whether patients are taking their medication at the right time and the right dosage, and remind them to do so.
Monitor long-term trends in patients’ conditions, including evaluating progress towards agreed patient goals.
Verify whether any medical equipment in the patient’s home requires maintenance.
The application of M2M enabled information management systems to healthcare is challenging. The healthcare sector's fragmented constituencies and complex transactions present a major challenge. It is too early to right-off the potential impact of M2M as mere hype, but it is clear that progress is slow and there are many barriers to overcome. In terms of care, the impacts are likely to be in areas such as quality control, patient safety and general improvements in outcomes and performance. The new ‘mHealth’ systems allow greater transparency and quick & easy access to medical data while maintaining very stringent requirements for security, safety, and patient-doctor confidentiality and privacy.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn.
