Here are some statistics from 2021. At the beginning of 2021, about 11.3 billion IoT devices were connected. The MedTech industry is undergoing a phase wherein IoT and wearables can’t be ignored at any stage. The global IoT medical devices market stood at USD 26.5 billion towards the end of 2021. This is expected to reach about USD 94.2 billion by 2026.
Both wearables and IoT are enabling the healthcare sector to stay totally connected, especially in the pandemic-hit industry. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the unusual conditions caused by the pandemic required the MedTech sector to stay connected remotely. Such a unique requirement turned the spotlight on the immense capabilities of both wearables and IoT in materializing a highly connected MedTech industry.
The capability to monitor the vital parameters of a patient remotely is of extreme importance in the present circumstances. Let’s take a look at a specific device, say smartwatches.
A recent survey conducted by Deloitte provided insights into valuable inputs. The survey found that about 39% of users possessed a smartwatch. As a result, there is increased interest in knowing more about the potential of these smartwatches for critical healthcare applications.
Not all are aware that smartwatches can be equally applicable for monitoring overall health, including sensors to detect blood oxygen saturation and pedometers.
Smartwatches and other wearables, such as bio patches, etc., are being used in multiple ways to assess the overall health of an individual.
Integrated intelligent devices have enabled healthcare professionals to make healthcare assessment much more straightforward, both in a hospital set-up and home environment. Furthermore, in 2022, wherein the healthcare sector is still trying to overcome the ill-effects of covid-19, IoT can be utilized to avoid many prevalent instances of insurance fraud.
Integrating IoT-captured data can be extremely important in preventing insurance-related fraud and associated scams while bringing in necessary transparency in the underwriting and claims handling procedures.
Significant technological advancements are driving innovations in the Medtech space, which paved the way for the development of an ever-increasing number of integrated medical equipment that can generate, accumulate, assess and transfer vast amounts of data.
The enormous amounts of data coupled with the devices themselves have led to the IoMT, a highly connected infrastructure comprising software applications, medical devices, and services and health systems.
One of the most promising applications for IoT in healthcare could be the ‘smart pill concept.’ The term smart pill might mean edible tablets that can serve as medicine and a source of otherwise misleading information about internal medical conditions.
However, an abundance of wearables and IoT as part of the MedTech sector might mean the possibility of obstacles. Here, connectivity would be the biggest issue. Several factors, both technical and environmental, can disturb communications. Buffering methods on regional microcontrollers have to be increasingly intense. Despite everything, security will always be a top priority for any IoT devices.