COVID-19 Impact on Internet of Medical Things (IOMT) in Healthcare Industry

Posted by swarajya on April 28th, 2021

COVID-19 Impact on Internet of Medical Things (IOMT) in Healthcare Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people obtain physician consultation. With the crucial need for social distancing, patients are avoiding face-to-face consultations and preferring the digital media. The healthcare landscape has changed. With countries across the world, attempting to combat COVID-19 at various degrees, the number of telehealth visits has bounced exponentially.

As the number of cases surged and the need for resources increased, healthcare providers started using internet of medical things (IoMT) for care provision. For instance, in Wuhan, IoT gadgets and robots were utilized to check temperatures of patients across clinics, in addition to screening sugar levels and pulse rates using arm bands. These devices also played an important role in cleaning and sanitizing, giving prescriptions and food to patients.

The focus of healthcare providers has changed with the spread of the pandemic. Although internet of medical things (IoMT) was already gaining momentum in healthcare applications, the outbreak of COVID-19 has augmented the market extensively. As it is not easy for the healthcare industry to make sudden modifications, the companies are offering solutions and services to make the process easier. Internet of medical things (IoMT) is playing an important role in management of gathering of patients in crisis divisions and making consultations for others easier. It is also helping in reducing the spread of the infection to uninfected patients who are looking for assessment.

Connection across clinical gadgets with varied sensors, mHealth applications and advanced technologies is demonstrating the advantages of internet of medical things (IoMT) in face of emergencies such as COVID-19. The outbreak has made it clear that internet of medical things (IoMT) should be utilized in healthcare industry for giving benefits distantly through connected devices and AI-based applications. Technologies including virtual healthcare, AI-based applications and telemedicine are demonstrating immense support during the pandemic. In these circumstances, internet of medical things (IoMT) is being used to reduce manual assignments for an overstretched staff by using remote patient monitoring and electronic data sharing. 

The pre-conceptions of healthcare providers regarding telemedicine have reduced during the outbreak of the novel coronavirus as it has become necessary. Several healthcare authorities and healthcare providers have demonstrated reactions in favor of internet of medical things (IoMT) for combating with the COVID-19 situations. However, among all the applications of internet of medical things (IoMT) are increasingly being for administrative management, repayment for new computerized administrations and assessment of clinical processes more frequently than other applications.

INCREASING NUMBER OF CONNECTED DEVICES

We are living in the era of increasing utilization of gadgets and applications in every walk of life including balancing the dearth of healthcare work force for areas other than COVID-19. Increased usage of devices has led to the demand for internet of things (IoT) leading to exponential increase in the number of connected devices. According to Cisco IBSG, 25 billion devices were connected to the internet by 2015 and prediction is for 50 billion devices by 2020. It is notable that these estimates do not take into account the rapid advancements in connectivity technology and are based on the status of technologies available at the time of the study. In case of any groundbreaking discovery in connectivity, the growth will be higher. Read more...