Properly leveraging the benefits they offer may demand an effort toward standardization in the healthcare and device market. Already the analytics of AI and connectivity of IoT create an opportunity as well as a challenge for the next generation of treatment options for patients. IoT provides the connectivity needed to link data from patients as they go about their day, to medical providers. AI offers a vehicle to manage that vast amount of data and analyze the details to determine what conditions may require follow up.

The transition into a new kind of health tracking has been underway for a decade or more, but it has been accelerating in recent years. I’ve observed a significant shift towards the integration of sensor-based data into patient care, said Lindsay Dymowski, president of Centennial Pharmacy Services, a medication-at-home pharmacy. Devices like continuous glucose monitors and wearable blood pressure monitors allow patients and their healthcare providers a real-time view into the state of the wearer’s health, on many levels.

This trend is moving towards more comprehensive remote patient monitoring systems that can track a range of vital signs and activities, aiding in proactive healthcare management, said Dymowski, co-founder and principal of The Centennial Group, a pharmacy management company supporting community pharmacies and health systems. Such wearables help those with prediabetes, diabetes, hypertension or musculoskeletal conditions. They often capture sensor data and transmit via Bluetooth to a user’s smart phone which forwards that data to a server.

Linxens provides medical sensor devices, for instance. The company, which launched with solutions for transportation, leisure and entertainment, has focused more on healthcare as officials see it as an area for technology growth. It offers patch-type sensors that affix directly to a user’s skin, or wearable flexible electronics. Another example ahead could be intelligent bandages that provide a technology-based type of wound care, by which sensors could detect healing and transmit that data via an application. Such technology has been under development by other entities, such as the University of Bologna.

Source: https://www.rfidjournal.com/news/artificial-intelligence-as-medicine/222694/