HEALTHCARE

IOT
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Components of
01 Introduction 02 Healthcare IOT

Advantages and
03 Risk of 04 Case Studies
Healthcare IOT
01 Introduction
 The salient features of IOT encourage researchers and industries to develop
new IoT-based technologies for healthcare. These technologies have given rise
to small, power-efficient, health monitoring and diagnostic systems.

 Currently, various IOT-enabled healthcare devices are in wide use around the
globe for diagnosing human diseases, monitoring human health conditions,
caring/monitoring for elders, children, and even infants.

 The basic skeleton of an IOT-based healthcare system is very similar to the

conventional IOT architectures. A typical architecture for healthcare IOT is
shown in Figure 14.1. We divide the architecture into four layers:
I. Layer 1: contains different physiological sensors that are placed on the human body.
These sensors collect the values of various physiological parameters. The physiological
data are analyzed to extract meaningful information.

II. Layer 2: The devices that belong to Layer 2 are commonly known as local processing
units (LPU) or centralized hubs. These units collect the sensed data from the
physiological sensors attached to the body and process it based on the architecture’s
requirement.

III. Layer 3: this layer consists of cloud architecture or high-end servers. The data from
multiple patients, which may be from the same or different locations, are accumulated in
this layer.

IV. Layer 4: The end-users directly interact with Layer 4 through receiver-side applications.
The modes of accessibility of these services by an end user are typically through
cellphones, computers, and tablets.
02 Components of
Healthcare IOT
1) Sensors: We have already explained that Layer 1 mainly consists of physiological
sensors that collect the physiological parameters of the patient. Few commonly used
physiological sensors and their uses are depicted in Table 14.1.

2) Wireless Connectivity: Without proper connectivity and communication, the data sensed
by the physiological sensors are of no use in an IOT-based healthcare system. Typically, the
communication between the wearable sensors and the LPU is through either wired or
wireless connectivity. The wireless communication between the physiological sensors and
LPU occurs with the help of Bluetooth and ZigBee. On the other hand, the communication
between the LPU and the cloud or server takes place with Internet connectivity such as
WIFI and WLAN.

3) Privacy and Security: The privacy and security of health data is a major concern in
healthcare IOT services. In a healthcare IOT architecture, several devices connect with the
external world. Moreover, between LPU and the server/cloud, different networking devices
work via network hops to transmit the data.
4) Analytics: For converting the raw data into information, analytics plays an important role in
healthcare IOT. Several actors, such as doctors, nurses, and patients, access the healthcare
information in a different customized format. Analytics is also used for diagnosing a disease
from the raw physiological data available [1, 2].

5) Cloud and Fog Computing: It plays a pivotal role in the storage of massive volumes
of heterogeneous health data generated from the patient body. These data are used for
checking the patient’s history, current health status, and future for diagnosing different
diseases and the symptoms of the patient. To store health data in a healthcare IOT
system, cloud storage space is used. Analytics of the stored data in cloud storage space
is used for drawing various inferences. The major challenges in storage are security
and delay in accessing the data.

6) Interface: The interface is the most important component for users in a healthcare IOT
system. Among IOT applications, healthcare IOT is a very crucial and sensitive application.
Thus, the user interface must be designed in such a way that it can depict all the required
information clearly and, if necessary, reformat or represent it such that it is easy to
understand. Moreover, an interface must also contain all the useful information related to the
services.
 Advantages and
03 Risk of Healthcare
IOT
Different advantages and risks of healthcare IoT as depicted in Figure 14.3
 Advantages of healthcare IOT
The major advantages of healthcare IOT can be listed as follows:
 Real-time:
• A healthcare IOT system enables users, such as doctors, end users at the patient side,
and staff in a healthcare unit, to receive real-time updates about the healthcare IOT
components.
• It enables a doctor to observe a patient’s health condition in real-time even from a remote
location and can suggest the type of care to be provided to the patient. On the other
hand, users at the patient end can easily take different decisions, such as where to take a
patient during critical situations.
• Moreover, the staff in a healthcare unit are better aware of the current situation of their
unit, which includes the number of patients admitted, availability of the doctors and beds,
total revenue of the unit, and other such information.

 Low cost:
• Healthcare IOT systems facilitate users with different services at low cost.
• For example, an authorized user can easily find the availability of beds in a hospital with
simple Internet connectivity and a web-browser-based portal.
• Moreover, multiple registered users can retrieve the same information simultaneously.
 Easy management:
• Healthcare IOT is an infrastructure that brings all its end users under the same umbrella
to provide healthcare services.
• However, healthcare IOT facilitates easy and robust management of all entities.

 Automatic processing:
• Healthcare IOT enables end-to-end automatic processing in different units and also
consolidates the information across the whole chain: from a patient’s registration to
discharge.

 Easy record-keeping:
• A healthcare IOT enables the user to keep these records in a safe environment and
deliver them to the authorized user as per requirement. Moreover, these recorded data
are accessible from any part of the globe.

 Easy diagnosis:
• In a healthcare IOT system, the diagnosis of the disease becomes easier with the help of
certain learning mechanisms along with the availability of prior datasets.
 Risk in healthcare IOT:
The various risks associated with a healthcare IoT system.
 Loss of connectivity:
Intermittent connectivity may result in data loss, which may result in a life threatening
situation for the patient. Proper and continuous connectivity is essential in a healthcare IOT
system.

 Security:
The healthcare system must keep the data confidential. This data should not be accessible to
any unauthorized person. On the other hand, different persons and devices are associated
with a healthcare IOT system. In such a system, the risk of data tampering and unauthorized
access is quite high.

 Error:
In the healthcare system, errors in data may lead to misinterpretation of symptoms and lead
to the wrong diagnosis of the patient. It is a challenging task to construct an error-free
healthcare IOT architecture.
04 Case Studies
 AmbuSens system –
This case study deals with
1) Overview of AmbuSens system.
2) The architecture of the AmbuSens system.
3) The hardware of the AmbuSens system.
4) Front End of AmbuSens system

1) Overview of AmbuSens system:

 It is an IOT-based healthcare system developed by Smart Wireless Applications and
Networking (SWAN) laboratory at IIT Kharagpur.
 The system was primarily funded by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development
(MHRD) of the Government of India.
 AmbuSens collects the physiological parameters of the remote patients and performs
real-time analysis of the collected data.
 The primary objectives of the AmbuSens system are summarized as follows:
• Digitization and standardization of the healthcare data, which can be easily accessed by
the registered hospital authorities.
• Real-time monitoring of the patients who are in transit from one hospital to another. At
both hospitals, doctors can access the patient’s health conditions.
2) Architecture AmbuSens system:
 The AmbuSens system is equipped with different physiological sensors along with a local
hub.
 The physiological sensors and LDPU form a wireless body area network (WBAN).
 Finally, the data are accessed by different users. The detailed layered architecture of the
AmbuSens system is depicted in Figure 1.7
 Layer 1:
• This layer consists of multiple WBANs attached to a patient’s body.
• These WBANs acquire the physiological data from the patient and transmit them to the
upper layer.

 Layer 2:
• It is responsible for handling cloud-related functions.
• WBANs attached to the different patients deliver data to the cloud end.

 Layer 3:
• In this layer, An algorithm is designed to generate a dynamic hash value for each patient
to keep the patient’s identity anonymous.
• The entire hashing mechanism of the AmbuSens is performed in this layer.

 Layer 4:
• The users simply register into the system and use it as per requirement.
3) The hardware of AmbuSens system:
In the AmbuSens system, a variety of hardware components are used such as:
a) Sensors
b) Communication units
c) Other computing devices

a) Sensors:The description of the sensors used for forming the WBAN in the AmbuSens
system are as follows:
(i) Optical Pulse Sensing Probe: It senses the photoplethysmograph (PPG) signal. Typically,
PPG signals are sensed from the ear lobe, fingers, or other locations of the human body.
(ii) Electrocardiogram (ECG) unit and sensor:It is a kit that contains ECG electrodes, alcohol
swabs, and a wrist strap. Typically, the ECG sensor measures the electrical impulses of the
heart to sense the heart’s responses and other factors affecting cardiac health.
(iii) Electromyogram (EMG) sensor:The EMG sensor is used to measure different electrical
activities related to muscle contractions; it also assesses nerve conduction, and muscle
response in injured tissue.
(iv) Temperature sensor:The body temperature of patients changes with the condition of the
body. Therefore, a temperature sensor is included in the AmbuSens system, which can
easily be placed on the body of the patient.
(v) Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) sensor:The GSR sensor is used for measuring the
change in electrical characteristics of the skin.
b) Communication Module:
-Each sensor node consists of a Bluetooth module. The communication between the sensor
nodes and the LDPU takes place with the help of Bluetooth, which supports a maximum
communication range of 10 meters in line of sight. The LDPU delivers the data to the cloud
with 3G/4G communication.
c) Local Data Processing Unit (LDPU):
- An LDPU is a small processing board with limited computation capabilities. The
connectivity between the sensors and the LDPU follows a single-hop star topology. The
LDPU is programmed in such a way that it can receive physiological data from multiple
sensor nodes, simultaneously.

4) Front End of AmbuSens system:

 In the AmbuSens system, the doctor, paramedic/nurse, and patient can participate and
use the services.
 The web interface is designed as per the requirements of the users of the system.
 Each user has the option to log in and access the system.
 Each of the users has to register with the system to avail of the service of AmbuSens.
Therefore, in this system, the registration process is also designed in a customized
fashion, For example, a doctor must enter his/her registration number in the registration
form.
Exercises:
(1) List the components of healthcare IOT.
(2) Why privacy and security is important for healthcare?
(3) What is wireless body area network(WBAN)?
(4) What is the difference between Electrocardiogram(ECG) and Electromyogram(EMG)
sensors?
(5) List the advantages of healthcare IOT.
(6) List the risks associated with healthcare IOT.
(7) How can data analysis be used in healthcare IOT?
(8) What is local processing unit(LPU)?
(9) Discuss an idea for developing an IOT-based healthcare system where we can
implement fingerprint sensor.
(10) Why is cloud computing important for healthcare IOT system?
THANK YOU