Tim Sherwood, Vice President, Mobility & IoT Solutions, Tata Communications shares his insights on the opportunities unleashed by IoT to boost efficiency and productivity in healthcare organisations
In the face of ever-increasing competition and evolving demands of patients in different geographies, healthcare service providers need to innovate and plan for digital transformation. In the developed world, they need to be equipped to treat an increasingly ageing population whereas in the developing world, a big challenge still is how to reach more and more people in regions and communities with not enough healthcare staff.
Given these varying demands, more and more healthcare organisations are investigating machine-to-machine communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) to stay ahead. Looking at the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) market, a report by Frost & Sullivan estimates that this segment is expected to grow at a 26.2 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $72.02 billion by 2021. This is a huge increase for a market that was worth ‘just’ $22.5 billion last year. Furthermore, according to Deloitte and NAT Health report, healthcare industry in India is expected to be worth $145 billion by 2018 and over $280 billion by 2025. It’s highly likely that digitisation will be an accelerator for this growth in the coming years.
While patients are already used to decentralised treatment centres, self-diagnosis portals and even telemedicine, this is just a beginning. Process management and cloud-based applications are unleashing new ways of working such as remote monitoring and support of patients, and delivering innovative ways for customers to access healthcare services.
The supply chain is changing too, with more and more collaboration across the entire ecosystem to bring down costs, accelerate the digitisation of medical records and introduce more patient-centric treatment models. This brings very real benefits to the quality of patient care, as local practitioners have more up-to-date data on their patients and their conditions at their fingertips, enabling doctors and nurses to make better informed data-led decisions with regards to remedies and patient care. Now the IoT looks set to change the healthcare sector once again. It’s worth investigating four key factors that are going to be crucial during this next evolution.
Healthcare will go global
Health organisations need to take digital transformation on board to extend their services and reach in areas and communities where there aren’t enough healthcare professionals to treat a growing number of increasingly elderly patients. To succeed, they’re going to have to get the right strategy in place.
Large healthcare groups are international, so connectivity services need to be international too. It’s no longer possible to think on a purely domestic basis. Healthcare providers need a reliable communications network partner that can provide end to-end mobile and cloud connectivity as well as data management services. Only by offering excellent service, both in a domestic setting and across borders can they win and keep new business.
Continuous collaboration
Multi-platform collaboration across employees, partners and patients is the next step for healthcare organisations. By giving everyone access to the data and applications they need, wherever and whenever they’re needed, healthcare organisations can boost productivity and drive efficiency.
Let us consider the advances that telemedicine has already introduced. Remote treatment of patients is estimated to have delivered savings of $132 billion in the EU alone.
One trend we’re bound to see is ever-better connectivity, as hospitals and organisations link up their care estate and supply chains to deliver a truly seamless service.
Connected healthcare experiences for everyone
Today’s connected consumers – and patients – increasingly expect their healthcare provider to offer them a similar digital experience as they are accustomed to when it comes to managing their finances through online banking, or ordering goods online. Patients want real-time data on their health and the ability to communicate with their doctor or nurse whenever, wherever. More and more clinics are already offering appointments via self-service portals, and alerts through simple application-to-person (A2P) messaging to remind patients of their appointment. Given the pervasive nature of SMS, there is scope for healthcare providers to extend the use of A2P messaging to, for example, remind their elderly patients to take their medications too. Furthermore, the increasingly sophisticated nature of IoT-enabled healthcare devices means that we’re only starting to scratch the surface of the potential of remote healthcare provision and monitoring.
However, healthcare organisations don’t simply need to start providing their patients with a seamless experience, they also need to consider how best to interact with partners too. Hospitals, diagnostic labs, consultants, researchers – they should all expect an omni-channel experience to deliver the best possible service. Furthermore, all parts of the healthcare ecosystem – hospitals, research facilities, pharmaceutical companies, clinics and patients – should be able to communicate and work together more easily, with a more seamless flow of information (with the patient’s consent of course).
Patient data is critical, yet connectivity could introduce a security risk. Organisations may also find it difficult to scale solutions as demand fluctuates. That’s why they have to make sure they’re choosing the right partner for their infrastructure solutions.
Trustworthy and reliable
As they take advantage of digital transformation, healthcare providers are going to have to take positive steps to manage to risk. That means protecting patient records and other data and applications against external threats. It also means ensuring service continuity and zero disruption in the event of a breach: it is not inconceivable that cyber criminals start to target millions of IoT-enabled healthcare devices to stage huge attacks which could put people’s lives at risk. That is why healthcare organisations need to adopt an adaptive security strategy.
A healthy transformation
It’s time for healthcare providers to offer a cross-border service, with a global network infrastructure and global connectivity. Only an international partner that offers global mobile network access and connectivity agreements is going to meet the requirements to deliver services such as tele-medicine, remote diagnostics and eHealth services.
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