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Monetization, Analytics Support Healthcare Mobile, IoT Devices

Healthcare mobile and IoT devices are becoming the norm and organizations must make the most out of them as they continue their digital transformations,

healthcare mobile devices, IoT

Source: Thinkstock

By Elizabeth O'Dowd

- Entities are in the midst of a digital transformation. As more healthcare mobile devices are introduced into IT infrastructure, organizations need to consider how they can collect and analyze data from these devices to improve patient care.

Mobilizing health IT infrastructure has two major long-term aspects for organizations that adhere to value-based care initiatives.

Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) and other mobile medical devices can cut back on costs by improving efficiency and provide valuable insight into patient health, which can help with population health. IoT devices are critical for collecting data for analytics and are the tools that will allow organizations to take advantage of real-time analytics and edge computing.

Organizations need to monetize healthcare IoT devices to embrace the full potential of the devices. Entities must also ensure that the data collected is secure while it’s moving and while it’s at rest. This includes the way data is collected at the source and where the data is stored.

Research and markets predicted the IoT monetization market to grow at a CAGR of 53 percent through 2023 because of cost cutting, improved efficiency, and reengineer operations.

The growth of IoT application development allows clinicians and patients to use IoT devices for more tasks and integrate them into everyday use. The increased uses for the devices calls for solutions that will ensure device security and efficiency.

Once the IoT devices and the data they collect are secure, organizations can look into mobile analytics to get the most out of device capabilities.

The mobile analytics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24 percent through 2023, according to another Research and Markets report.

The growth of mobile analytics is driven by the increase in mobile apps for smartphones as well as IoT devices. The increase in healthcare cloud adoption is a factor in the increase of mobile analytics, according to the report.

IoT monetization and mobile analytics are both steps organizations can take to adopt real-time analytics at the point of care and edge computing.

Edge computing is expected to take off in the next year as entities look to decentralize their IT infrastructure and make use of tools on the edge of the network.

The IEEE defines edge computing as “enabling technologies allowing computation to be performed at the edge of the network, on downstream data on behalf of cloud services and upstream data on behalf of IoT services. The ‘edge’ is as any computing and network resources along the path between data sources and cloud data centers.”

Using IoT devices and edge computing can help clinicians make more accurate diagnoses at the point of care and can also give entities more insight and visibility into their network. Organizations also have the opportunity to gain better insight into a patient’s health by viewing the data collected by IoT devices in real-time.

“If organizations want a holistic view of a patient, they need to account for the IoT device data in real-time,” WhamTech CTO and Senior Vice President Gavin Robertson told HITInfrastructure.com in a previous interview. “Clinicians want to impact the patient’s ongoing healthcare. They don’t want to wait until two weeks later finalize the data, they want to deal with it there and then.” 

Real-time data allows clinicians to collect, analyze, and decide on a patient’s condition during their initial interaction. Real-time environments lower costs because bulk processing is avoided, as are the overnight loading into data warehouses.

Real-time environments also help with data governance, making sure the information entered is correct. If organizations can address data governance upfront then it solves a lot of problems concerning data quality.

As IoT devices become more common in healthcare, organizations need to consider how to get the most out of their devices. IoT devices can help reduce costs and gain insight into patients if they are utilized correctly.