Health Monitoring and Management Using Internet-of-Things (IoT) Sensing with Cloud-Based Processing: Opportunities and Challenges
Among the panoply of applications enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT), smart and connected health care is a particularly important one. Networked sensors, either worn on the body or embedded in our living environments, make possible the gathering of rich information indicative of our physical and mental health. Captured on a continual basis, aggregated, and effectively mined, such information can bring about a positive transformative change in the health care landscape. In particular, the availability of data at hitherto unimagined scales and temporal longitudes coupled with a new generation of intelligent processing algorithms can: (a) facilitate an evolution in the practice of medicine, from the current post facto diagnose-and-treat reactive paradigm, to a proactive framework for prognosis of diseases at an incipient stage, coupled with prevention, cure, and overall management of health instead of disease, (b) enable personalization of treatment and management options targeted particularly to the specific circumstances and needs of the individual, and (c) help reduce the cost of health care while simultaneously improving outcomes. In this paper, we highlight the opportunities and challenges for IoT in realizing this vision of the future of health care.