IoT Solutions for Healthcare
With 13 years in IoT, ScienceSoft provides reliable IoMT solutions to improve patient care, asset use, and staff productivity.
Healthcare IoT solutions facilitate monitoring patient health state and tracking medical staff and assets through the network of smart devices and sensors connected to the cloud. Holding ISO 13485 certification, ScienceSoft is ready to help you establish cost-effective technology-enabled care and integrate IoMT innovations into your internal processes.
IoT in Healthcare: Market Overview
The global medical Internet of Things (IoMT) market is projected to grow from $60.03 billion in 2024 to $814.28 billion by 2032 at a CAGR of 38.5%. IoMT is popular for remote patient monitoring, hospital asset tracking, medical staff location tracking, and more. It enables uninterrupted real-time monitoring and helps automate routine care delivery operations and administrative tasks and ensure secure patient stay at the hospital.
IoT Adoption in the Healthcare Industry
Already in 2019, Gartner revealed that 79% of surveyed healthcare organizations with $100+ million annual revenues were using the IoT technology in their processes. In a 2018 survey, Deloitte found that 87% of medtech companies believed connected medical devices would be central to delivering value and efficiency for healthcare providers. In April 2024, Market.us Media cited Deloitte, stating that as of 2020, 59% of healthcare providers had implemented IoMT solutions, with about 85% using the IoMT devices to support patient engagement and monitoring. Additionally, approximately 64% of patients used at least one device daily.
The key drivers of IoT adoption in healthcare
- The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic like staff shortage, increased patient flow, etc.
- Need to reduce costs associated with healthcare services by optimizing routine tasks (e.g., patients’ health parameters monitoring) and overall operations efficiency.
- Focus on active patient engagement and patient-centric care, high demand for a personalized approach to care.
IoMT System Architecture
An IoMT application usually connects a set of devices (e.g., smart medical devices for remote patient monitoring, RFID tags and readers for IoT-based tracking) via gateways to a cloud server. The cloud server hosts data storage, processing, and analytics modules, solution business logic, and control applications. The user and admin apps enable patients, medical staff, and other employees involved to access the collected and analyzed data, send commands to control apps (e.g., to turn off ward air conditioning), and more.
IoMT Solutions for Technology-Enabled Care
In healthcare IT since 2005, we deliver solutions to make the healthcare environment more secure and convenient for patients and healthcare professionals. Following our mature project management practices, we drive projects to their goals regardless of time and budget constraints.
Remote patient monitoring
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions enable continuous health data collection (e.g., body temperature, blood pressure) and assessment, early symptom detection, alerts for patients and medical staff on abnormal health parameters, and more. This enhances disease treatment and management, clinical decision-making, care accessibility and continuity, patient support and engagement.
How IoT-enabled patient monitoring works: Connected medical devices (e.g., ECG patches, EEG sensors, glucometers) or wearable biosensors collect health parameters and send them to a cloud server for storage and analysis. If the health parameters exceed or go below the pre-set thresholds, a doctor and a patient get notified.
Use cases:
- Monitoring patients with chronic diseases like cardiovascular diseases, neurological diseases (e.g., Parkinson’s disease), COPD, cancer.
- After-surgery monitoring of outpatients.
- Advanced analytics for diagnostic monitoring to detect the early symptoms of diseases (e.g., prediabetes, arrhythmia).
- Analytics to identify disease course patterns and potential complications.
- Monitoring of medication adherence (e.g., using smart medication dispensing devices for geriatric patients, smart pill bottles).
- Sports medicine.
Hospital asset tracking
Hospital asset tracking solutions help minimize asset loss and theft through continuous monitoring of asset location and availability, optimize investments with asset utilization management, automate asset management processes, and enhance patient care by reducing search time for medical supplies, medications, etc.
How IoT-enabled hospital asset tracking works: RFID tags are attached to or embedded into hospital assets (e.g., medical devices, surgical tools). When an asset is moved, RFID readers located in the hospital rooms or halls (e.g., on the walls, by the doors) read the tag and send information on the asset location to the cloud server. The hospital asset tracking solution can display movable assets on an interactive hospital map or show the nearest assets upon a search request.
Use cases:
- Medication inventory tracking.
- Hospital equipment utilization monitoring (e.g., MRI scanners).
- Prevention of hospital items use by unauthorized people.
Patient and staff tracking
Monitoring the location of patients and medical staff in hospitals enhances security, helps identify and address inefficiencies in the staffing and scheduling processes of a healthcare organization (e.g., lack of on-duty nurses), and improves bed allocation.
How IoT-enabled patient and staff tracking works: Each patient and staff member gets a bracelet with an RFID tag containing relevant information (e.g., ID, name, position, electronic medical record, current health condition). When a patient or a staff member moves around the hospital, RFID readers on the hospital walls and ceilings receive the tag’s location and send it to the cloud server for further processing and analysis.
Use cases:
- Patient and staff safety improvement in hospitals.
- Prevention of infant abduction.
- Monitoring of flight-risk patients.
- Patient flow optimization in hospitals.
- Real-time staff location tracking in emergency rooms.
- Scheduling and daily task optimization for physicians and nurses.
- Bottleneck detection in hospital workflows.
Smart hospital solutions
Smart hospital use cases are numerous – from room environment monitoring to the identification of security incidents (e.g., unsolicited access to a laboratory). Smart hospital solutions bring benefits like decreased power, water consumption and associated expenses, optimized ward conditions to support patients’ recovery, etc.
How an IoT-enabled smart hospital solution works: Using sensors (e.g., motion sensors, temperature sensors), a smart hospital solution collects necessary information about a room condition to analyze and initiate a set of pre-defined actions. For example, when the motion is detected, the solution turns on the lights; when the ward temperature is above 77 degrees, the solution turns on air conditioning.
Use cases:
- Climate control (e.g., to maintain a lower temperature in empty wards, adapt ward humidity).
- Smart room lighting with cloud-connected ward sensors (e.g., a light switch, door, and window contacts).
- Hospital energy efficiency monitoring.
- Hospital security monitoring.
Remote care delivery and self-management for patients
Used primarily for patients with chronic diseases, remote care delivery IoT solutions facilitate patient treatment in home settings, ensuring secure and efficient care decisions without the direct participation of the doctor.
How IoT-based self-management for patients with chronic diseases works: Via the connected medical devices or sensors, the IoMT solution gets data on patients’ health state, and, if necessary, triggers the treatment delivery (e.g., insulin injection using an insulin pump), calculates the necessary medication dose, etc.
Use cases:
- Diabetes management (e.g., using continuous glucose monitors, smart insulin pens, continuous glucose monitors, smart insulin pumps, or closed-loop artificial pancreas systems).
- IoT-based spirometer therapy for patients with COPD.
Benefits of Technology-Enabled Care with IoT
New opportunities for chronic disease management and better care for outpatients with the help of remote patient monitoring and outcomes analytics.
Asset cost analysis and asset investment optimization using the data about how assets are used in a hospital.
Increased patient safety and satisfaction.
Lowered risk of medical equipment malfunctions due to predictive maintenance.
Reduced staff overloads due to automated routine tasks (e.g., patients’ health parameters measurement, medical asset disinfection).
For large health systems: better visibility from the headquarters into the state of remote facilities.
Tracking of movable assets and better visibility into medical asset utilization.
Competitive Advantages of ScienceSoft’s IoMT Solutions
Integration with the IT ecosystem
We seamlessly integrate IoMT solutions with the healthcare systems (e.g., EHR, EMR, HIS) to ensure effective communication between IT infrastructure elements and avoid data fragmentation.
Data and application security
To tackle information security challenges and protect sensitive information (e.g., patients’ health records) from misuse, we deliver HIPAA-compliant IoMT solutions. We are also ready to conduct a vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of your IoMT solution to ensure the highest level of protection of sensitive data. Our information security management capabilities are backed by ISO 27001 certificate.
Fast software delivery and lowered investment risks
Despite the benefits of the medical Internet of Things, there is still the risk that substantial investments may not pay off as expected. We offer an iterative development to mitigate the risk: we work in short iterations, and you pay only for the performed work instead of spending a huge budget at the very beginning. We begin with an IoMT solution featuring basic functionality, so you can put it into practice and see the benefits. With every new iteration, we expand the solution’s functionality.
Technology Elements Used to Develop IoMT-Based Software
Selected Projects
IoT in Healthcare: Consulting and Development by ScienceSoft
Having 19 years in healthcare IT consulting and development services, 13 years in IoT, and an ISO 13485 certified quality management system, ScienceSoft is ready to bring your medical IoT projects to life.
Consulting on IoMT adoption
What we do:
- Identify and analyze your medical IoT and related business needs.
- Outline the functionality of future IoMT software.
- Create a high-level APIs design to enable required integrations (with EHR, CRM, practice management software, etc.).
- Design tailored IoMT software with a flexible architecture to allow you to add new features when required.
- Estimate the cost, ROI, and software delivery timelines.
- Regulatory compliance roadmap (e.g., to comply with HIPAA, HITECH regulations).
Development of IoMT software products
What we do:
- Conceptualize IoMT software based on high-level or detailed requirements.
- Create a comprehensive feature list of healthcare IoT software.
- Plan IoMT software architecture with a focus on flexibility and scalability.
- Develop the MVP of the IoMT system with priority features in 3-6 months and roll out other functionality upon the agreed schedule.
- Ensure IoMT software compliance with required regulations (HIPAA, HITECH, etc.).
- Support and maintain software (if required).
About ScienceSoft
Established in 1989, ScienceSoft is an international IT consulting and software development vendor headquartered in McKinney, Texas, US. Being ISO 13485 and ISO 27001 certified, we assist healthcare organizations and software product companies in designing and developing high-quality medical IoT software.