Smart Industry 2/2018

Smart Lifestyle healthcare
Health Care
A Shot OF IoT
The value of the IoT health-care sector is set to surpass $136
billion by 2021. As the prospect of truly connected health care
becomes a reality, which digital services should hospitals
be looking to adopt to better serve patients – and are they prepared
for the impact on existing networks and systems?
n By Nicole Hill
Care providers are under
pressure to deliver high
standards of care to larger
volumes of patients – at a
time when many health-care services
across the world are being squeezed
financially. Patients expect rapid diagnosis
and, increasingly, access to
health services even while outside
hospital or clinical boundaries. This
is made possible through the widespread
use of mobile devices and
wearable health tech which can provide
on-demand feedback on condition
or fitness. So, how can clinicians
do more, for less money, without the
introduction of thousands of extra
staff? Technology holds part of the
answer.
Industries such as manufacturing,
hospitality, and the public sector are
already embracing greater digitization
and automation – whether this is
connecting status sensors to machinery
for automatic maintenance scheduling
or meeting day-to-day personal
requests through an AI chatbot. With
Nicole Hill
is director of the
Healthcare Sector
at Alcatel-Lucent
Enterprise
a fully connected approach and a resilient,
scalable backbone – key for
critical health monitoring applications
– health care can start to exploit
real digital transformation, driving
new efficiencies and improving patient
health outcomes.
More digitization,
more data
As the cost of deploying IoT devices
continues to fall, hospitals are increasingly
able to connect different areas
of the health-care ecosystem, linking
together previously isolated systems
and siloed data.
Devices as varied as pacemakers and
ventilators to insulin pumps now
have some form of connectivity, while
wearable health and fitness tracking
devices are also generating large
amounts of data. This presents an
opportunity for hospitals to harness
data for greater accuracy in diagnosis,
treatment delivery, and further
personalization of the patient experience.
This digital transformation of health
care doesn’t stop at simply connecting
existing devices. Many hospitals
are digitizing existing patient records
and other paper-based documentation
as part of a wider push towards
improving workflows by creating a
“paperless hospital.”
But all these digital transformation efforts
can reap many more health-care
benefits. All this data can not just be
processed but analyzed to generate
valuable patient and diagnosis insights
– another job we can turn to
technology for.
AI and automation are
easing staff workloads
Once portrayed as a futuristic technology,
artificial intelligence is redrawing
the way hospital staff generate,
compile, and action medical records
and other health data. By automating
generic or recurring tasks, AI will
help rescue clinicians from excess
“red tape,” freeing more time to spend
with patients.
Advanced AI solutions for the healthcare
sector are making their way into
hospitals and delivering broad benefits
for clinicians and patients alike:
• In the UK, the National Health Service
has collaborated with Google
DeepMind Streams, an analysis and
diagnosis application for acute kidney
injury that will lay the groundwork
for a fully AI-powered solution.
• An AI-powered virtual nurse is being
trialed in the US and UK, allowing
patients to check in and report
any symptoms from their conditions
that will then be shared with
doctors for a follow-up video appointment.
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