The rapid pace of technology innovation has led to the medical device sector becoming an integral part of the health care industry, with advanced medical device technologies delivering tangible benefits such as reduced patient recovery time and lower cost of instruments. The internet of things (IoT) is one of those technologies, and the internet of medical things market, a sub-sector of the IoT market, stood at $22.5 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $72 billion by 2021.
As the adoption of IoT technologies in health care continues to rise, so do its challenges, including security concerns, connectivity issues and time-to-market delays. Medical device manufacturers and application developers play an important role in overcoming these challenges at device inception and thus have the opportunity to help save time and costs and improve treatment for patients at the beginning stages of the creation process.
In this article, we’ll examine the current role of the IoT-connected device in the health care industry and its opportunities and challenges, and we’ll also discuss how device manufacturers and application developers can support the device creation process moving forward.
The Current Role Of IoT In The Health Care Industry
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Taking a step back, the IoT refers to billions of devices around the world that are connected to the internet — specifically devices that generally lack this function. As a result of this connection, these devices can collect and share data, both with you and me as well as each other. It’s possible to turn almost anything, from a lightbulb to an automotive vehicle, into a part of the IoT and, by doing so, add a level of digital intelligence, transforming a “dumb” device into a “smart” machine.
In the medical sector, these connected machines can help monitor and update caregivers. The devices can transmit vital data from a patient’s home or hospital room to the hospital staff, allowing for the real-time monitoring of the patient’s health. Beyond hospital staff, patients can also use IoT devices directly (think connected glucometers or heart rate monitors) to help keep their doctors up-to-date on their status or illness.
Moving forward, these devices will be able to collect, record and analyze data that was not accessible before. The ability of devices to gather data on their own removes the limitations of human-entered data. Moreover, with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, advanced medical equipment can use the data collected by IoT-connected machines to recognize abnormalities and detect serious illness before they spread. By using automation to obtain critical data, today’s medical devices drastically reduce the risk of human error.
What Are The Challenges?
Cybersecurity is an important concept in any technology arena. Introducing new connections with the help of modern deployments like IoT opens doors for potential new breaches, which can lead to mistreatment or serious injury of patients. Moreover, if confidential health care data (think medical history) gets compromised, the results can be catastrophic, both for the victims and the manufacturers. It comes as no surprise that industry analysts expect total IoT security spending to exceed $3 billion within the next few years.
Second, network connectivity is crucial for every IoT solution, especially in environments like emergency operating rooms. Serious complications will arise if the medical device lacks a consistent connection. Without the real-time information transfer that doctors and surgeons rely on during evaluations and operations, patients might be at risk. Also, due to today’s demanding, multiple-device environments, a network can become overwhelmed quickly, which increases the likelihood of missteps while transferring information from one point to the next.
Lastly, the development of state-of-the-art medical devices requires various internal and external teams to work together concurrently, including software and hardware engineering, regulatory affairs and other fields. These collaborations take a significant amount of time, money and resources and are holding back this market’s growth.
How Device Manufacturers And Application Developers Can Accelerate Time To Market
For medical device developers and manufacturers, three areas can potentially extend their timelines as they bring devices to market: the absence of an organized regulatory approvals strategy, security concerns and inefficient product development.
Global regulatory processes ensure that only functioning, safe equipment is introduced to the market, and depending on the risk to a patient’s overall health, the approval cycle can be time-consuming and complex. To help accelerate the commercial deployment, medical device manufacturers should consider a strategic, planned regulatory approach, either in the form of an in-house global regulatory professional or a partnership with a compliance consulting firm.
To ensure a device stays usable over its planned lifetime, creators must consider security implications, including potential dangers as a result of IoT connections, during the planning and testing phase of the machine rather than as an afterthought. To help overcome critical dangers down the line, developers must build software that is easily accessible for last-minute updates, might an attack take place. Moreover, device creators should consider authentication and authorization standards early in the creation process to help monitor who controls the application and accesses high-risk user and patient data. Lastly, application developers should run security tests continuously throughout the development cycle to identify and patch security hazards in real-time.
To improve product development efficiencies, medical device manufacturers can implement tools, resources and techniques to develop safe and effective products faster than before. Device creators could further expedite the development process by utilizing tools and technologies available on the market to streamline the iterative prototyping process, like screen generators, design tools, and software factories, making it easier and more useful. By making their software development more efficient, device creators will reduce the development cycle and instead focus on security, connectivity and efficiency, as well as time to market, allowing medical device manufacturers to recognize new product revenue sooner.
As the adoption of IoT technologies in industries like health care continues the rise, the industry must be prepared for the accompanying opportunities and challenges. Medical device manufacturers and application developers should play a leading role in integrating these technologies at the beginning stages of the process, thus saving time and cost and improving the patient experience.
Date: May 07, 2019
Source: Forbes