The Internet of Things for Medical Devices - Prospects, Challenges and the Way Forward

Ashok Khanna has over 19 years of industry experience in the field of healthcare, hi-tech and telecom. As a business leader, his expertise spans multiple medical and pharmaceutical domain areas including new product development, product lifecycle management, manufacturing operations management, R&D and quality, regulatory and product sustenance. With over 21 years of experience in the IT industry in areas such as software development, research, technology consulting and software quality assurance, Prateep Misra leads the development of platforms for Internet-of-Things applications. Misra's current focus areas include IT infrastructure architecture and design, IT transformation, storage systems, large scale and real time analytics platforms, and cloud computing. With the increasing use of sensors by medical devices, remote and continuous monitoring of a patient's health is becoming possible. This network of sensors, actuators and other mobile-communication devices, referred to as the Internet of Things for Medical Devices (IoT-MD), is poised to revolutionize the functioning of the healthcare industry. Connected health technologies have gained prominence as a result of the widespread occurrence of chronic diseases and the stringent need to control healthcare costs of an aging population. A connected healthcare environment promotes the quick flow of information and enables easy access to it. Improved home care facilities and regular health updates to clinicians reduce the chances of redundant or inappropriate care, improve patient care and safety, and reduce overall costs of care. Connected health solutions can also be used to track lifestyle diseases such as hypertension, diabetics and asthma which need continuous monitoring. The IoT-MD provides an environment where a patient's vital parameters get transmitted by medical devices via a gateway onto secure cloud based platforms where it is stored, aggregated and analyzed. It helps store data for millions of patients and perform analysis in real time, ultimately promoting an evidence-based medicine system.