Healthcare Applications

**41**

**Chapter 4**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

Healthcare

IOT Service Utilisation in

Utilising the new trend technologies in healthcare sector could offer alternative ways in managing the patients' health records and also improve the healthcare quality. As such, this chapter provides an overview of utilising the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in healthcare sector as an emerging research and practical trend nowadays. The main benefits and advantages have been discussed in this chapter. On the other hand, it has been found that most of the hospitals in different countries are still facing many issues regarding their health information exchange. Recently, various studies in the area of healthcare information system mentioned that the fragmentations of the health information are one of the most important challenges with the distribution of patient information records. Therefore, in this chapter, we gave an in detail overview regarding the current issues facing the health sector in line with the IoT technologies. Additionally, a full description of advantages and disadvantages has been highlighted for using IoT in healthcare that can be

**Keywords:** IoT, Internet of Things, healthcare, e-Health, health information exchange

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new technology that aims to connect the world via smart devices or objects with capabilities of collecting and sharing various types of information at any location, time, media and environments. By assigning a unique identification to each object in the network, IoT allows its users to live smart, safe lives. In healthcare systems, IoT is mainly used to gain quick access to health information. IoT can be defined as an interconnected network that links a large number of devices to one another for purposes of making large-scale information accessible to all. This technology can be seen as a grid of computers that deliver software and data via the Internet. As illustrated in **Figure 1**, Cisco defines IoT as a revolution of the 'Internet of Everything' that involves people, processes, data and things [1]. Many health organisations need to exchange data with one another to address their problems and to improve their performance [1]. Health-related data are especially important for these organisations to provide their patients with better healthcare services. The exchange of health information among these organisations has been termed 'health information exchange (HIE)', which has become a pervasive global phenomenon [2, 3]. Although not a novel concept in the health industry, HIE needs to reinvent itself every 2.5 years to adapt to the current technological advancements and the changes in the environment [4]. According to the 'Evolution of State Health Information Exchange in the U.S. (2006)', HIE offers

*Mohammed Dauwed and Ahmed Meri*

considered as solutions for the mentioned issues.

**Chapter 4**
