IoT in the Medical Field

IoT is a process in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction [1]. IoT has spread into various fields such as Smart City, Automobile, and Medical. IoT applications have a wide variety of capabilities and this article describes one such application: a fully functioning medical device integration model with layered architecture.

At present, there are many human information systems (HIS) which manage registration of patients, treatments, and charges. But during treatment, there are a fewer number of effective and reliable systems for data representation. IoT has brought a revolutionary change to the medical field, facilitating decision making while reducing errors and costs.

With traditional and manual methods, the doctors have to pay their full attention in order to access medical devices. However, the technologies are changing rapidly, improving the capabilities to monitor various health parameters [2], which can help detect health issues like heart attacks, hypertension, and respiratory diseases.

In the last decade, several researchers have done surveys and analyses on IoT in health services on a multitude of topics. The difficulties with medical device integration are mostly based on the differences in data standards between the different devices as well as their data accessing modes. The following description is of a fully-functional medical device integration model with a layered architecture [3] which can circumvent this issue. Those layers are: sensor layer, network layer, internet layer, and services layer. The functions of each layer are clarified in below.

Figure 1: Overview of the system with layers [3]

Sensor Layer

IoT can be a physically interconnected network where “things” can be connected and controlled remotely. In the sensor layer, smart systems or sensors are able to exchange information among the various types of devices. In this layer, different sensors could be present, such as blood oxygen sensor, heart rate sensors and smartphone sensors.

Network Layer

The role of the network layer is to connect the devices and servers using different data protocols. Protocols can be TCP/IP standards like MQTT, CoAP, and AMQP. Detected data from sensors are sent to a particular server to be stored in a database or for further processing [4]. Data can also be directly transferred to devices such as mobile phones, tablets, and PCs. Thus, protocols not only support devices to communicate with each other but also to communicate with the servers.

Internet Layer

The internet layer is responsible for data storage or management. In IoT, cloud storage is used most often, where the cloud provides important services like data storage, data management and data security [5].

Services Layer

The Service layer is considered as a middleware that provides the full functionalities to integrate applications and services in IoT. In this instance, it provides direct data access to the doctors or caretakers. The doctors and caretakers can easily attend to the necessary treatments or even provide remote support in case of an emergency. This layer uses different protocols and techniques like RESTful web services, HTTP, and HTTPs.

There are many IoT offerings in the market targeting various customer segments. Due to the complicated nature of medical device integration with the internet, the development of IoT in healthcare would be the starting point in helping researchers for further investigation into the field [6]. Therefore this article may act as an entry-point for a more in-depth study into the fascinating area of IoT in the medical field.

References:

[1] - Vermesan, O. and Friess, P. eds., 2014. Internet of things-from research and innovation to market deployment (pp. 74-75). Aalborg: River Publishers.

[2] - Ferreira, A.G., Fernandes, D., Branco, S., Monteiro, J.L., Cabral, J., Catarino, A.P. and Rocha, A.M., 2016, March. A smart wearable system for sudden infant death syndrome monitoring. In Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2016 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1920-1925). IEEE.

[3] - Ullah, K., Shah, M.A. and Zhang, S., 2016, January. Effective ways to use Internet of Things in the field of medical and smart healthcare. In Intelligent Systems Engineering (ICISE), 2016 International Conference on (pp. 372-379). IEEE.

[4] - www.postscapes.com, “IoT Standards and Protocols” [online], Available : http://www.postscapes.com/internet-of-things-protocols/ [Last accessed 14-03-2017]

[5] - M. Gordon, K. Marchesini, "Examples of Cloud Computing Services" [online], Available : https://www.unc.edu/courses/2010spring/law/357c/001/cloudcomputing/examples.html [Last accessed 14-03-2017]

[6] - R. Banham (01-Aug-2016), “IoT Complexity” [online], Available : http://www.rmmagazine.com/2016/08/01/iot-complexity/ [Last accessed 14-03-2017]