Internet of Things (IoT) has wide applications in the healthcare sector. It allows for real-time patient monitoring and analysis from remote locations using sensors and devices. IoT improves various areas of hospital operations like patient tracking, hygiene maintenance, record keeping, smart equipment, billing and procurement. However, IoT also faces challenges like privacy concerns, high costs, lack of standards and need for regulations. If these challenges are addressed, IoT has potential to transform healthcare delivery and outcomes in the future.

1. GROUP 7: Garima, Neha, Himanshu,
Karthikeyan, Malay,
Mayank

2. APPLICATION OF INTERNET OF THINGS IN HOSPITALS
What if we come to our home, the cctv recognizes our face and
retina patterns and opens the door, the air conditioning device
welcomes you and automatically sets it to your soothing level by
sensing your body temperature, the refrigerator automatically
pours a glass of water by sensing you are thirsty, the TV
automatically plays sufi music by sensing your mood. And all you
need to do to make your home appliances work is absolutely
“Nothing”. Welcome to the era of Internet of Things.
Internet of things, in simple terms, means that the physical
devices, objects, mechanical and digital machines are connected
to each other through internet and they do not require a human
interaction to operate. It recognises unique identifiers and
operates consequently. The standard oxford definition of IoT is
“the interconnection via the Internet of computing devices
embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive
data”.
IoT is an emerging technology having wide implications in
social, economic, political and other domains. We can observe
our surroundings with many examples where consumer goods and
items, cars, sensors are all interconnected through the internet
and through the data processing and use of analytical
capabilities perform certain tasks without minimal human
interventions. It has changed the outlook of our lives
immensely. It has been estimated that 100 billion IoT devices

3. will be interconnected and will have an economic impact of more
than $10 trillion by 2025.
INTRODUCTION:
The application of Internet of Things (IoT) has
increased substantially after the development of
various Information and communication technologies like
big data analytics, artificial intelligence etc. It has
opened new opportunities for various sectors. This
report analyses the applicability of IoT in Healthcare
sector in general and Hospitals in particular. The
applicability will be extended not only to big
corporate hospitals but also to any small government
hospital.
Traditionally, doctor patient relationship has been
based on clinical consultations, or through telephone
or texts. The real time analysis of patient from a
remote location was not possible.
But IoT has changed the way people are being treated at
hospitals.

4. BASIC CONCEPT:
The concept of IoT can be understood through its 4
steps:
STEP 1

5. Deployment of various devices to collect the data
related to patient’s health conditions. It includes
sensors, detectors, actuators, cameras, monitors, wrist
bands etc. These devices have twin purposes:
a.To record the data from the human body e.g.
wristbands to sense pulse and give pulse rates and
heart beats.
b. To disseminate this data to the server or any other
device which can understand the meaning of this.
STEP 2
In this step data is aggregated and pre-processed.
Usually the data are collected in analog form which is
not easy to decipher or to present to the end product
user. Therefore the data are passed through 2
processes”
a.Aggregation of all data e.g. heart beats, body
temperature, pulse rate etc are collated
b.Convert all these data from analog to digital form
so that further processing of these data can be
easily done

6. STEP 3
The Data related to patient’s healthcare is
standardized and then sent over to any data storage
system. Cloud storage is used because data can be
accessed through the internet and there is no need to
carry data storage physical units along with us.
STEP 4
This step is the most important among all the steps.
Data is analysed with the use of highly sophisticated
tools, chips, and software codes. Through this step
only the patient knows which type of attention is
required for his medical conditions. Now a days IoT has
become advanced enough to suggest due course of action
also.
One example can be depicted from the above pictorial
representation.

7. The bracelets and sensors on the wrist of an in-patient
notices the fall of the patient and sends the data of
movement to server. The data is converted to a suitable
form and then processed and analysed. This analysis
makes the conclusion that patient has fallen and there
is no further bodily movement. And now the IoT system
sends an alert to the designated nurse to rush towards
the exact location of the patient. The exact location
is found by IoT through GPS systems integrated in it.
This example shows how convenient it has become to
treat and track the patient’s recovery in a hospital.
APPLICABILITY OF IOT IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF HOSPITAL:

8. 1.PATIENT TRACKING: The above example has been given
to depict how patients in a hospital can be tracked
by the use of RFID and GPS technologies, and by
even the use of facial recognition by CCTV cameras.
In case where, patients are to be released, IoT
sends an automated text to the relatives to come to
the hospital and pick up the patient. IoT has
reduced human labour and opportunity cost related
to hospital visits and treatments.
2.IMPROVED HYGIENE AT THE HOSPITALS: The biggest
threat to a patient in a hospital is unhygienic
conditions. IoT can help in identifying the causes
and suggest suitable measures. For example: by
setting proper temperature and humidity it can stop
the spread of any bacterial infection in the
hospital premises.
3.RECORD MAINTENANCE AND ENHANCED SUPERLATIVE CARE:
IoT keeps the doctors updated about patients’
physical symptoms. It sends alarms when some of the
physical parameters like body temperature or pulse
rate goes into alarming zone. The preventive
measures are taken and further damage to the
patient is avoided. In case of critically ill
patients in ICU IoT reduces the burden of physical
presence of an attendant to keep a check. Rather
the real time data are directly disseminated to the
doctor’s device and he keeps a check on patients
from a remote location.
4.SMART INJECTION TUBES: The automatic injections
inject the medicine at a constant pace in ICU.
Whereas smart injections will push medicine into

9. the body of the patient at a varied pace. For
example, when the patient is in extreme pain in
post recovery after a surgery, it will be sensed by
his sweat, body heat and pulse rate levels by the
sensors and IoT system will make sure the injection
of Morphine is sufficient to ameliorate the pain of
the patient.
5.BILLING: The billing and insurance system which are
integrated with IoT will take less time to settle.
Insurance companies can get access to the health
related data and intelligent devices can easily
identify causes and treatments thereafter. This can
reduce the fraudulent claims and help the insurers
in underwriting cases. Customised insurance
premiums can be created on the basis of these data.
The compliance by the customers, and transparency
by the insurers can help in improved insurance
penetration. IoT has the potential to change the
landscape of the health insurance sector in India
on a substantial scale. IoT will help the
government streamline its schemes of insurance for
poor people and reduce their out of pocket
expenditure.
6.PROCUREMENT: Like Wal-Mart’s use of RFID tags to
improve its operational efficiency in inventories,
hospitals can use this technology to replenish the
medicine stocks. Specially the government
hospitals, which provide free medicines to the
poorer segment of our population can get immensely
benefited from this. The cases of empty stock of
medicines can be avoided and underprivileged people
can be treated better.

10. 7.SMART EQUIPMENT: It includes smart beds, smart air
conditioners, smart sensors in the room, smart
monitoring devices which all can help in giving
comfort to the patient. For example: smart beds can
recommend sitting posture if the patient is in
sleeping position for a longer duration.

11. ECONOMY:
1. National growth: IoT platform
“Particle” surveyed various industries
active in IoT devices and
communications and concluded that
IoT industry will have a massive
economic impact of $11 trillion by
2025. IoT boom is fuelled by IoT
devices like gadgets, homes, vehicles
etc which has gone to $60 billion
(Ref:https://www.iotforall.com/how-iot-
impacts-economy/). The hospital
sector will also by instrumental in
buying devices, robotic surgeons,
sensors, RFID technologies etc. and
will lead to economic boom.
2. Sustainable development: The use
of IoT will curb human interventions
but will lead to increase in substantial
usage of machine which will require
energy. Majority of these energy will
be provided by fossil fuels. Hence it
becomes indispensable to use clean
energy for IoT. Otherwise we will not
be able to meet the target of Paris
Agreement of reducing global
temperature by 2 degrees by the end
of the 21st century.
3. Cost: IoT is based on devices and
sensors. Companies have put up a lot
of money for research and
development of new technologies of
IoT. Therefore the Intellectual
Property cost of IoT related devices
are higher and it becomes
unaffordable for poorer section of our
population. Therefore it has the
capacity to increase the divergence
between have and have not classes.
The cost of hospital treatment is

12. SOCIETY:
1.Reduced Human Labour: IoT can replace human labour
and reduce the unnecessary opportunity costs. It
can replace human labour in riskier areas also. In
the hospital sector, works related to Human
resources can be reduced. The works of procurement,
billing, attendants can be replaced by the IoT
devices. Even a robot can do the work of a surgeon
in some cases.
2.Inequitable Development: IoT can replace human
labor in industries and manufacturing units. Now
the chances of increasing unemployment looms large.
Machine replacing Human labour is becoming real.
Studies by Oxford University academics Carl
Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne suggest that
dental technicians jobs are one of the jobs in
already skyrocketing in India and
investment in capital goods of IoT will
increase the burden on the public.
Government hospitals will not be able
to catch the pace of development of
private hospitals.
4. Efficiency: Reduced human error and
absence of discretionary powers will
make the operational efficiency
higher. E.g. The chances of error in
surgery by robots will be lesser as
compared to human beings. IoT will
have 57% higher efficiency.

13. which IoT will replace human labour the most in
number in the USA.
3.Inaccessible and non universal character of
healthcare due to higher cost of IoT: Society with
the majority of population belonging to poorer
segment will not be able to afford IoT healthcare
or will have to shell out more money out of their
pocket. This will push them into the chronic
poverty.
WORK-PLACE
1.Increased collaboration at workplace: Because of
the complexity of IoT technologies, more people and
more teams will need to collaborate to work upon a
given task. A recent Harvard Business Review some
58 per cent or early adopters of IoT technology in
the workplace, stated that it increased and
promoted collaboration. In hospital sector also,
new avenues of workplace will open up. E.g.
Technicians working on robots will collaborate with
surgeons for robotic surgery.
2.New Opportunities: New workspace for data analytics
will open up. In IoT huge amount of data are
collected, collated and processed. New technologies
and software products will be needed to make these
data more actionable and useful. Therefore new job
opportunities will open up in areas of big data
analytics, artificial intelligence along with in
the field of IoT.
3.Development of SMEs and start-ups: New start-up
companies are coming up in cities like Mumbai,

14. Delhi and Bangalore solely based on the ideas of
IoT. The purpose of these companies are to collect
the data from customer sector and make is usable
for them. For example: a startup GOQii makes an IoT
based wearable wristband and provides fitness
coaches also.
4.Disruptive technology: IoT has the capacity to
create many disruptive technologies which will
change the way our workplace has worked. For
example, In hospital sectors pathologists play a
crucial role. They diagnose the patients’ health
through various checkups. IoT devices can do
preliminary checkups just by sensing the body
thorough intelligent gadgets. Therefore now the
workplace has the tendency to be more technology
driven and less human driven.
CHALLENGES
IoT has various challenges which have been categorised
under the following heads.
1.Cyber security: We hear the news of hacking of IoT
devices every now and then. Since IoT extensively
uses internet, the chances of the hacking if
gadgets is extremely high. In health care, cyber
security is of highest importance. Any tampering of
data will lead to wrong medication and it may have
very dangerous implications on the life of a
patient.
2.Privacy: The gadgets are highly sophisticated and
GPS enabled also. Many a times the location of a

15. person can be easily accessed by anyone having
control over that unique identifier. Issues related
to data privacy is on forefront these days. One
patient may not like to share his medical data but
will have to do so if he/she wants to get benefited
by IoT enabled services. Sometimes people are
unaware that their data is being shared.
IoT deploys device and collects data with
multinational or global scope which is a cause of
concern.
3.Cost: The Intellectual Property costs of IoT are
far higher than the cost of traditional hospital
setups. Therefore the challenge is to reduce the
cost to make it poor friendly and get it
implemented in government hospitals also. Though
there are chances that the reduced human labour
cost will try to moderate the high price rise
effects.
4.Standards: Due to non standard processes and non
documentation of standard practices, it is often
seen that such devices are manufactured which
behave randomly sometimes and become out of control
of the operator. Faulty designs, wrong burning of
codes on chips, and wrong configuration of tools
are some of the reasons. Healthcare sector cannot
afford to non standardisation of devices and need a
standard product which is a challenge.
5.Regulation: There are challenges related to
regulation of devices, data privacy issues,
standardisation of products, creation of compliance
standards for gadgets etc. In the absence of these
regulations, all big and small players get the

16. opportunity to exploit data or create faulty
products. McKinsey Global Institute predicts that
around 38% of IoT applications’ output will be
coming from less developed regions of the globe
where regulations are weaker in all sectors.
DEFINING THE FUTURE
This paper has discussed how the Internet of Things is
changing the entire way of life of our universe. Its
impact on economic, social, political and our work
environment is much more than we see around. The future
of our world moves around the use of computers,
networks and gadgets. Internet of Things will be one of
the central themes of our future.
Similarly the use IoT in healthcare sector is going to
stay. The IoT based connectivity has the potential to
change the ailing healthcare system of our country into
an integrated and efficient one. India’s contribution
in global burden of disease is more than 20%. India’s
health parameters like infant mortality rate, maternal
mortality rate, longevity of life, stunting, wasting,
out of pocket expenditure etc are abysmally poor on a
global scale. But with the use of technology like IoT,
not only curative but preventive and educational
healthcare also will be strengthened.
The future holds great opportunity for IoT based
healthcare. But there is an increasing need to plug the
loopholes that pose as challenges to the IoT which has
already been discussed in this paper. It’s not about
$11 trillion impact by 2025. But it is about the

17. quality of life that IoT will provide which will be
unmatched by any standard for the coming generation.
All we need to do is to welcome this change
wholeheartedly.