Examples of IoT in Healthcare: Applications, Use Cases

The Internet of Things has much to offer to many industries, with healthcare being amongst the ones that benefit the most. It’s probably not the variety of devices themselves, but rather how useful and multi-purpose is IoT in healthcare.

Take heart rate tracking devices. They’re suitable for private use while exercising, for example. Hospitals and physicians can also use them to track their patients’ well-being and health state. Moreover, health insurance companies can tailor their insurance plans to the needs of their clients if users decide to share such data. This data-sharing aspect is especially relevant when you build a health insurance mobile app that integrates wearable device information for personalized care.

So, whatever business you have, it’s likely that you can use IoT healthcare devices to provide better services. Luckily, you don’t have to bother building your own IoT device — there are hundreds of third-party providers you can partner with.

Step 2: Data Digitization

Analog data from IoT devices used in healthcare, such as heart signals, mobility metrics, or environmental conditions, is collected and converted into a digital format. This step is crucial for ensuring the processing and analysis of the data.

Step 3: Cloud Migration

After the data is digitized, it undergoes preprocessing and standardization processes that make it suitable for analysis. The data is then moved to a cloud data center, which makes it easy to scale the storage and access from anywhere, enabling remote monitoring and analysis.

Step 4: Insight Extraction

This final step involves applying sophisticated analytics to the processed data to develop relevant insights. Healthcare providers can use this information for various purposes, including diagnosis, real-time patient monitoring, and intelligent treatment protocols. This capability can contribute to more patient-focused care through targeted and speedy interventions.

Looking to develop a robust IoT solution for healthcare? Contact us to build scalable and secure systems tailored to your unique needs!

With all its pros and cons, we, at Stormotion, strongly believe that IoT is moving healthcare in the right direction.

Data Overload and Accuracy

The monstrous quantity of IoT-generated data should be gathered and examined to be true. Due to varying data and communication protocols across different institutions, it becomes challenging to utilize them effectively, which in turn impacts decision-making in the applications of IoT in healthcare.

Cost

Although the initial introduction of IoT to healthcare is costly, the gains in terms of time and resource savings, effective processes, and income generation can be enormous if the implementation addresses actual issues that need a solution.

IoT for Patients’ Private Use

This group of users mostly benefits from small wearables that they carry around or have on throughout the day without experiencing major inconveniences. For example, bands and bracelets, rings, headbands, glucometers, or maybe even subdermal devices.

The main health metrics that can be tracked, including in women's health tracking app development, are heart rate, blood pressure, glucose levels, various activity tracking like steps and walking distance, calorie count, etc.

Apart from that, patients can also use such devices to oversee their elderly relatives. For example, if they require urgent medical attention and nobody’s around to notice it, the device notifies users about the issue so they take action accordingly.

There are also patients with chronic medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, or even Parkinson's. They benefit from IoT healthcare devices a lot since they help with tracking the course of the condition and thus, help to improve treatment.

Private usage is closely connected with fitness and exercising, making it essential to understand how to create a fitness app that customizes workouts using these metrics. We have a separate article dedicated to the IoT in the fitness industry if you’d like to learn more specifics about the topic:

Let’s take a look at the first case study of how IoT healthcare devices can be privately used:

IoT for Healthcare Professionals

Another target audience of IoT healthcare devices is medical professionals who use such devices in their work. Surely, the main purpose of it is remote monitoring (for example, home monitoring systems) of the patients.

With their help, they can track how patients’ bodies respond to certain treatments, whether or not it has any damaging side effects, etc. Practically, it's a 24/7 overview of patients’ health, and you can develop a physical therapy app to ensure everything goes as prescribed.

Additionally, physicians can get notified if a patient requires immediate medical help. Take a stroke, for example. Often, such a condition occurs without people noticing it at all, but a high-quality IoT healthcare device can track even the smallest abnormalities and report them to physicians.

Physicians or nurses can also use the devices to remind patients to take medications in case they forget about them. For example, if a patient forgets to tick off a certain meds intake and the doctor notices it, they can send them an additional reminder through a dedicated app (which a lot of IoT devices come with to enable the device’s control).

Surely, there are also devices for automated patient onboarding, which includes getting to know patients’ medical history, navigating through clinics’ services and available medical procedures, billing them for services, performing medical insurance-related operations, etc.

One of the examples of IoT in healthcare is how healthcare professionals can use wearable alarms:

IoT for Hospitals

Hospitals can enhance patient care and operational efficiency through companion application development, utilizing IoT devices in ways that are uniquely beneficial to hospital settings. They can use IoT solutions in healthcare to keep track of medical equipment and hospital machinery using IoT devices with location-tracking functionality. Plus, such devices can be attached to wheelchairs to ensure the security of those patients who use them.

Such devices are useful for organizational purposes since a lot of them are targeted at automating managerial tasks like registering people entering the hospital, tracking employees working hours, etc.

Another major use case of IoT for healthcare is hygiene control and monitoring. This means that whenever there’s a spread of any infection, concentration of bacteria, or lapses in hand hygiene, IoT devices with scanners can detect these issues and notify employees.

Last but not least, such devices, including robotic systems, can be used for pharmacy inventory control and environmental management, such as keeping track of drugs, checking temperatures in refrigerators or other temperature-dependent machines, controlling humidity, and more.

Let’s take a look at a fascinating IoT device used in healthcare that’s perfectly suitable for hospitals:

IoT for Health Insurance Companies

In healthcare app development, clients’ health data collected via IoT devices can be strategically used by insurers for various purposes. It’s useful for underwriting treatments and processing claims. This is a great way to make sure that there’s no fraud from the side of clients.

However, it’s important here to still provide needed medical attention since not every condition can be detected by smart devices. Even though the implementation of Internet of Things technologies for healthcare would bring transparency to the insurance company-client relationship, each body is unique and requires a personalized approach.

But before getting the data, crucial for various applications including those pondering how to make a yoga app, it’s important to make your clients willing to share it. For that matter, you can use various gamification features and incentives like merch, discounts, special insurance plans, unique icons and stickers for the app, etc.

However, for medical applications, you might want something dedicated, something you can be 99,9% sure will measure precisely. A dedicated device for heart rate monitoring is provided by Polar, for example. What’s great about the Polar sensor is that you can connect it to other health IoT devices via Bluetooth (if you want to develop something similar, you should evaluate the BLE vs Bluetooth Classic effectiveness) and ANT+ (wireless data transferring protocols).

Plus, it doesn't necessarily have to be a wristband. Wahoo is one of those companies that offer chest straps for heart tracking.

Some companies offer dedicated tracking devices for various kinds of sports. Even though a lot of them are designed for running and cycling, you can definitely find something for any sporting activity. Garmin, for example, offers HRW-Swim chest straps for swimmers.

There are also examples of IoT in healthcare for tracking other health indicators:

• Saturation: Vive Health, iChoice. These devices are smart finger clips.
• Body composition: most smart devices in this category are smart scales — Renpho, Xiaomi, Wyze. We should mention though that there’s controversy within the community on how precise such scales can function.
• Sleep: Oura Ring, Sleepon, Sleepscore devices.

Patient Control & Remote Monitoring

Apart from monitoring generic health metrics, some patients, especially those using services from psychological therapy app development, require special monitoring due to their medical conditions, including chronic ones. Luckily, the IoT in the healthcare industry has enough devices to offer for most chronic diseases.

COPD and Asthma

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma are among the top 4 most prevalent chronic diseases (most healthcare-related research COPD or asthma on the list, depending on the region).

The main way of dealing with such diseases so that people can have normal lives is inhalers. Nowadays, the IoT industry offers multiple smart inhalers that work via a dedicated app. Let’s take a closer look at such IoT solutions in healthcare.

The first provider we’d like to mention is Digihaler. There are two smart inhalers from the company — AirDuo and ProAir. The first one is targeted at 12-year-olds or older to control asthma symptoms and prevent signs of pulmonary disease such as wheezing, for example. ProAir is suitable for a younger audience (4+ years old) and has a special emphasis on preventing and relieving bronchospasms.

The functionality includes keeping track of inhaler usage frequency and inhalation strength, getting instant feedback based on such data, and visualizing dynamics to track deteriorations as well as improvements.

Another stakeholder who works with both asthma and COPD is Propeller. The main difference from the previous provider is that the company offers attachable sensors, meaning you can use them with any inhaler of your choice. The functionality of these IoT devices in healthcare varies from inhalation counter to analyzing reasons for symptom flare-ups.

It also offers location tracking to help you find your inhaler or sensor if misplaced, inhalation reminders, air quality analysis, and weather-based seasonal recommendations.

Diabetes

Diabetes is (sadly) another widespread chronic disease — over 450 million people suffer from this medical condition to a certain level. Luckily, the community is actively working towards improving an already existing supply of smart diabetes management devices. Let’s talk about what’s already available on the market.

As of now, one of the most revolutionizing Internet of Things technologies for healthcare is sensors inserted under patients’ skin, with or without insulin pumps. We’re talking about Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) systems that allow measuring glucose levels every couple of minutes throughout the whole day.

Medtronic provides one of the classic CGM smart systems. The device is suitable for people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The functionality includes measuring glucose levels, predicting highs and lows, visualizing glucose level dynamics, etc. Additionally, clients can purchase insulin pumps that will automatically keep insulin at the needed level.

Omnipod also offers a whole insulin management system. The functionality is quite similar, tracking and controlling insulin levels, sending reminders, and so on. The amount of insulin that the device contains is enough for 3 days of continuous insulin issuing.

The next healthcare IoT provider we’d like to talk about is Eversense. The company has been one of the first to offer smart CGM systems with implantable insulin pumps. What’s unique about the device is that it can last for up to a year without having to reinsert it.

Surely, all the data can be shared with a doctor and used for further treatment plan improvements or supportive therapies.

Ingestible Sensors

Most of us would agree that getting such invasive examinations as colonoscopy isn’t the most pleasant experience. Fortunately, the IoT in healthcare has an alternative — small ingestible devices with sensors and cameras that allow doctors to diagnose patients without having to “invade” their guts.

The first provider we’ll talk about is the PillCam Colon 2 System from Medtronic. They offer a small capsule that scans, records and takes pictures of the colon. After getting the data, the device immediately transfers it to a computer or other device.

There’s a healthcare technology called Ingestible Micro-Bio-Electronic Devices (IMBED). It’s able to detect inner bleeding. The way such devices function is quite a complex scientific matter so we won’t get into detail here.

Long story short, the devices contain biosensors that generate light when coming into contact with a certain bacteria. The light detector in the device detects it and then commands the transmitter to generate data and send it to the dedicated IoT applications for healthcare on an external device.

You can take a look at the research we’ve used for this abstract by following this link.

Medication Intake Management

IoT healthcare devices help doctors ensure patients take their medications as prescribed, eliminating the need for constant monitoring.

Let’s talk about Pillsy, a smart pill bottle that works as an automatic dose-tracking device. The functionality includes sending reminders to take the meds, double dose alerts, notifying the caregiver which can be set up in settings, and location-based snoozing (if patients aren’t near their bottle, they’ll be notified once they’re in range).

Another example of IoT use cases in healthcare is the automatic medication dispenser from PharmRight called Livi. When it’s time to take the medication, the green button is supposed to light up (of course, the timing can be set up according to the doctor’s prescription).

After users press the button, the medication is dispensed. It has several dispensing modes and enables high-level customization, allowing loading up doses that should last up to 90 days of daily pill intake.

Elderly Care

Technically, a lot of devices listed above can be used for elderly care, even though it’s not what they initially were designed for. Heart rate trackers can function as devices for preventing heart failures, especially strokes, which are more likely to happen to seniors.

Medication intake management systems are also particularly suitable for older adults, as they often experience memory issues more frequently than younger people.

Ingestible sensors are also an excellent solution for working with the elderly, as pain tolerance tends to decrease with age (research paper on this statement). Physicians can avoid painful procedures by leveraging innovative IoT solutions for healthcare.

Additionally, you can partner with smart emergency button providers (like DevelCo or Akuvox) as part of the elderly care business, if that’s your case. Such Internet of Things medical devices can be set up to send emergency signals to ambulances, police, other institutions, or designated users. This will notify them that the person requires immediate medical help if the person isn’t able to make a call, for example.

Clinics Management & Automation of Administrative Processes

Apart from monitoring and controlling patients’ health, there are many other areas where healthcare IoT devices can be very useful. The one we’d like to talk about is automating administrative tasks and asset management.

The first provider we’ll talk about is Fabric which offers chat-based AI products. It can be used to collect clients’ medical history, navigate them through available services, send follow-up questions regarding their well-being and treatment effectiveness, etc.

You don’t have to look for separate providers for different management purposes — multiple vendors offer complex solutions that include the most necessary devices for asset management.

Let’s take Zebra as an example. Their offer includes mobile computers to perform management, smart RFID sets (readers, sleds, and antennas), desktop and industrial RFID printers, etc.

CenTrak is another provider that has a whole lot of healthcare IoT solutions for asset management, hygiene control, infant security, environmental monitoring, emergency and nurse call automation, infection control, etc.

SportPlus provides their clients with exercise machines and equipment with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) modules, meaning that you can control them remotely using the dedicated SportPlus app.

The BLE integration within the modules using React Native BLE collects users’ health data such as heart rate, calorie count, exercise history, dynamics of health metrics, etc. These modules then send the data to the app so users can conveniently access it and discuss it with their physicians if necessary.

However, before getting such health data was possible, we needed to make the app compatible with all of the devices. Initially, most of their fitness devices have different protocols (in other words, language that allows data exchange between machines and humans).

Luckily, each device had an app developed specifically for it. Thus, we were able to collect the data that was generated while using the exercise machines with an already functioning app, find out what protocol is used in each separate case, and set up the SportPlus app accordingly.

In the realm of IoT use cases in healthcare, STEPR showcases how fitness technology can bridge the gap between physical activity and health monitoring. Its compact stair-climbing machines support heart rate monitor straps, enabling users to track real-time cardiovascular data during workouts.

The Android-based console app syncs with Bluetooth-enabled heart rate straps, providing live insights into heart rate, steps per minute, calories burned, and more — all displayed on a unified dashboard. This integration not only enhances workout safety but also aligns with healthcare IoT trends, helping users monitor their health proactively.

To ensure seamless functionality, we overcame challenges like Android’s security restrictions and designed an intuitive UI with large, tappable elements, perfect for use during workouts. The app also supports real-time metrics alongside entertainment content for a comprehensive and engaging fitness experience.

Our expertise in healthcare tech extends beyond IoT, as demonstrated by our collaboration with FitTracks. This fitness app offers voice-guided workouts tailored for beginners and advanced users, encouraging a lifestyle shift toward long-term wellness.

FitTracks apart is its recognition by the German government as a provider of prevention courses. Users can benefit from up to 100% cost reimbursement through their health insurance, making it an impactful tool for promoting preventive healthcare.

Our role in the project included developing a seamless, user-centric app consistent with FitTracks’ website design while ensuring accessibility across iOS and Android platforms using React Native. The app features online and offline courses, enhanced with photos, videos, and voice guides from qualified trainers, supporting users in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Ready to enhance your healthcare solutions with IoT? Contact us today to learn more about our expertise and how we can help bring your ideas to life!

Another important regulation is the HIPAA or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It standardizes health-related information protection and its management in the USA. It includes what treatment patients get prescribed, their condition itself (including its future improvement/depreciation), etc.

We have an article where we review these two regulations (plus PIPEDA) in detail and discuss how to comply with them. Feel free to check it out if you'd like more information on this topic.

# 2: Is Building Your Own IoT Device Worth It?

To put it simply, our team believes that there are plenty of reliable third-party providers of IoT healthcare devices on the market so that you don’t have to build your own. However, it surely is an option. Let’s talk about what you might need for it.