- Improving Broadband Technology Supports Healthcare IoT
"The IoT market has started a new growth phase due to the release of new wireless formats, including BLE, LoRa, LTE-M, and NB-IoT," Mobile Experts Principal Analyst Joe Madden said in a statement. "These are a solid improvement on prior wireless formats, since they offer long-range connectivity with long battery life. Over the long term, we expect the current list of 70 IoT connectivity technologies to consolidate down to 20-25 technologies.”
The consolidation of technologies may help organizations deploy less devices on their network. The more advanced devices will perform multiple tasks, eliminating the need for smaller devices as they become redundant.
IoT devices are not at this stage yet, which requires healthcare organizations to build strategies to support the larger predicted number. Networks need to be able to support all the IoT devices during periods of high traffic, and reach wide enough to allow mobile IoT devices to be truly mobile.
Many healthcare organizations are turning to broadband to support their IoT network because it allows organizations to use their wireless network for computers and other stationary devices.
Taoglas Co-Founder and Co-CEO Dermot O’Shea told HITInfrastructure.com that cellular connections are more reliable than WiFi because it allows devices to be truly mobile.
“Cellular is the only reliable way to really communicate with the devices,” O’Shea explained. “If you’re only using WiFi then you’re relying on the user, patient or caregiver to do all the WiFi connectivity in terms of selecting the WiFi network and putting in the password.”
IoT devices support more than just on-premises devices. IoMT devices depending on WiFi connectivity have to constantly connect to and disconnect from different WiFi networks as the user moves. If the device is connected to broadband, it doesn’t have to keep reconnecting to different WiFi networks and constantly ask for network permissions.
Remote care and telehealth programs that depended on the patient’s home WiFi network were often unsuccessful, especially when clinicians were visiting patients in rural or underserved areas. Home WiFi connections were often unreliable and were not strong enough to transmit large files or stream video for conferencing.
“Cellular is more robust in an environment,” said O’Shea. “It’s never a problem if too many people are using cellular to log onto the network like it is with WiFi. That’s often the problem in a hospital: there’s too many people using the network at the same time and it slows down the network.”
Broadband supports the rapid growth of medical IoT devices and is still significant even if the predicted number of future devices is lower than initially thought. Broadband gives WiFi networks relief, but it also provides mobility which is equally as important.
Organizations need to consider how much mobility they will need when building an IoT strategy. Telehealth and mHealth programs require some kind of broadband connectivity regardless of how many devices are deployed.
The future of healthcare IoT depends on reliable connections and the capability to handle large volumes of devices. Implementing a broadband strategy will help support most IoT initiatives.