**2. Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare**

The rapid proliferation of smart devices offers unprecedented opportunities for patients and health care professionals to exchange health information electronically [16]. The IoT is one of the smart technologies to integrate the smart devices on network. On the other hand, IoT is a global information infrastructure that enables advanced services by interconnecting devices based on existing and evolving interoperable information and communication technologies [21]. Thus, it is a collection of several opportunities that have wellness providing for the hospitals such as optimising the resources through automated workflows as well as process excellence. For instance, a majority of hospitals use IoT services for asset management and controlling humidity and temperature within operating rooms [22]. The collection of health data has multiple benefits to interdisciplinary healthcare collaboration, while most of the research focuses on the personal fitness plan and has a lack of compatibility and extensibility among a large number of devices and their business models. Compatibility involves in information exchanging, communication and events processing. There is a strong need for an efficient interface mechanism to simplify the management and interconnection of things. However,

**Figure 2.** *IoT-hospital scenario [66].*

the compatibility issue among the heterogeneous devices should be taken into consideration and addressed for the interactions among things [23].

**Figure 2** illustrates how this revolution in the medical will look in a typical IoT hospital, in practice. The patient will have an ID card, which, when scanned, links to a secure cloud which stores their electronic health record vitals and lab results and medical and prescription histories.

The IoT has the potential to several benefits for health applications such as remote health monitoring, fitness programs, chronic diseases, children care and elderly care. Furthermore, it allows sharing and controlling the information between human to human or human-object or between objects using the Internet via ubiquitous sensors [24]. Therefore, various medical devices, sensors, and diagnostic and imaging devices can be viewed as smart devices or objects constituting a core part of the IoT [12]. The IoT-based e-Health monitoring method will help in reducing the number of visits to a doctor, and even the doctor can monitor his or her patient from anywhere. As this is a technology not so feasible now, but in coming years, this technology will meet the physical world definitely. The e-Health solutions provided through IoT devices are more accurate and accountable in the emerging IoT business landscape, which offers and provides various opportunities and challenges to an industry [25].

The IoT technology is still understudy to utilise it in the health sector in different regions in order to combine the information with control and monitoring such as China, US, Canada, etc. As a historical background, the Internet of Things was discovered by Kevin Ashton in 1998 to facilitate information exchange over the wide-world where every physical object connected through the Internet with a unique identification and can be monitored everywhere. One of the facilities of IoT for information systems is that it can provide services anywhere, anytime, and on any media [24]. In healthcare, the Internet of Things enables the potential benefits to achieve a high rate of exchange of massive information among organisations and organisation itself.

Some advantages of using Internet treatments included self-paced, interactive, of tailored service, multimedia format, greater accuracy reporting symptoms, timely information, accessibility, low cost, standardisation and increased user and supplier control of the intervention. Sensor technology and automated data collection enable passive monitoring of psychological states that can alert patients and healthcare providers to acute and chronic stress states [26]. These sensors

**45**

**Table 1.**

*The IoT advantages and disadvantages.*

*IOT Service Utilisation in Healthcare*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86014*

Better quality of healthcare management

Advantage Monitoring Remote patient monitoring continues to grow and help

error rate.

Sensing IoT with intelligent medical sensors will enhance the

of health problems.

Low-cost solutions Reduce unnecessary visits by doctors, and

and reduce testing cost.

Unified information Automated data collection enabled from health

the health record.

evolution.

Disadvantage Complexity The IoT is a diverse and complex network. There is

Time This facilitates the interaction among the parts of an

failure can cause a lot of trouble.

cause many security challenges.

Massive health data In IoT, devices assemble and communicate information

needs to be treated and managed.

Compatibility Although different manufacturers will be

Security and privacy A location tracking and collect inappropriately

Ubiquitous access Allow and increase the accessibility from anywhere,

**Explanation Sources**

[27, 28]

[22]

[29]

[30]

[31, 32]

[27]

[33]

[34, 35]

[23]

[36, 37]

[38, 39]

physicians diagnose and treat illnesses and diseases with obtaining reliable information with a negligible

quality of life significantly and prevent the occurrence

readmissions come from patients with chronic diseases

any time and any media allowing flexibility and mobility to the users. Enable real-time access services to the healthcare provider to access patient information

Increase the care quality and control by enhancing the management of drugs, reduce the medical error, enhance the patient experience, improve the disease management and improve outcome of treatment.

information resources such as monitoring, first aid, tracking, analysis, diagnosis, alarm-triggering, locating and collaboration with medical healthcare under unified communication platform and exchanged

enterprise and allows for reducing the time necessary to adapt itself to the changes imposed by the market

a need of multiple services to grow device counts, massive increases of Internet bandwidth with a need to drive requirements for lower latency, greater determinism and processing closer to the edge of the network. Thus, any failure or bugs in the software or hardware will have serious consequences. Even power

interconnected, the problem issue of compatibility when manufacturers do not agree to a common standard will make the people buy appliances from a certain manufacturer, leading to its monopoly in the market.

information for any person considering as a challenge in the using of IoT services in the healthcare system. The patient concern of attacks his personal identity and privacy maybe arise. Therefore, bring big data from millions of things in a healthcare system can

directly with each other via Internet and the cloud manages to collect record and analyse data blocks. But the 'things or devices' which are producing a massive amount of data are blowing out day-to-day, which

and help them to make better decisions.

*IOT Service Utilisation in Healthcare DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.86014*

*Internet of Things (IoT) for Automated and Smart Applications*

the compatibility issue among the heterogeneous devices should be taken into

**Figure 2** illustrates how this revolution in the medical will look in a typical IoT hospital, in practice. The patient will have an ID card, which, when scanned, links to a secure cloud which stores their electronic health record vitals and lab results

The IoT has the potential to several benefits for health applications such as remote health monitoring, fitness programs, chronic diseases, children care and elderly care. Furthermore, it allows sharing and controlling the information between human to human or human-object or between objects using the Internet via ubiquitous sensors [24]. Therefore, various medical devices, sensors, and diagnostic and imaging devices can be viewed as smart devices or objects constituting a core part of the IoT [12]. The IoT-based e-Health monitoring method will help in reducing the number of visits to a doctor, and even the doctor can monitor his or her patient from anywhere. As this is a technology not so feasible now, but in coming years, this technology will meet the physical world definitely. The e-Health solutions provided through IoT devices are more accurate and accountable in the emerging IoT business landscape, which offers and provides various opportunities

The IoT technology is still understudy to utilise it in the health sector in different regions in order to combine the information with control and monitoring such as China, US, Canada, etc. As a historical background, the Internet of Things was discovered by Kevin Ashton in 1998 to facilitate information exchange over the wide-world where every physical object connected through the Internet with a unique identification and can be monitored everywhere. One of the facilities of IoT for information systems is that it can provide services anywhere, anytime, and on any media [24]. In healthcare, the Internet of Things enables the potential benefits to achieve a high rate of exchange of massive information among organisations and

Some advantages of using Internet treatments included self-paced, interactive, of tailored service, multimedia format, greater accuracy reporting symptoms, timely information, accessibility, low cost, standardisation and increased user and supplier control of the intervention. Sensor technology and automated data collection enable passive monitoring of psychological states that can alert patients and healthcare providers to acute and chronic stress states [26]. These sensors

consideration and addressed for the interactions among things [23].

and medical and prescription histories.

**Figure 2.**

*IoT-hospital scenario [66].*

and challenges to an industry [25].

**44**

organisation itself.


**Table 1.** *The IoT advantages and disadvantages.*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Technologies associated with IoT [67].*

can be used in monitoring patients, tracking daily activities, and caring for the chronic disease people or patients who have special states [27]. This information offers treatment that is evidence based from the information obtained from sensors and monitoring activities. All the applications of this technology culminated in increased comfort, convenience, and better management, thereby improving the quality of life. **Table 1** shows the multiple advantages and disadvantages of Internet of Things-based healthcare monitoring and management of health system.

Many open challenges need to be addressed by new research and investigation, mostly due to the complex deployment characteristics of such systems and the stringent requirements imposed by various services wishing to make use of such complex systems. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the current approaches to standardisation in this area can be improved and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the IoT field [36]. In addition, many other technologies and devices such as barcodes, smart phones, social networks, and cloud computing are being used to form an extensive network for supporting IoT [12, 23] (as shown in **Figure 3**).
