• October 7, 2022
• By admin

Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)

IoMT has a wide-ranging impact on the healthcare industry. These changes are most noticeable when IoMT is used at home, on the body, in the community, and in the hospital:

IoMT at home:

People can use in-home IoMT to send medical data from their home to other locations, such as their primary care provider or a hospital. Remote patient monitoring (RPM), for example, is the use of medical devices to transmit metrics like blood pressure or oxygen saturation from recently discharged patients to their hospital for review by their doctors. This can help to reduce hospital readmissions by identifying problems before they become serious.

Telehealth, or the use of communication technologies for remote healthcare services, adds more flexibility by allowing recently discharged patients to resolve minor issues by connecting with their doctors remotely.

The use of IoMT devices in conjunction with telehealth can also be beneficial for providing ongoing care outside of the patient setting. Personal emergency response systems (PERS), for example, can detect events such as a fall or a heart attack and automatically summon assistance. PERS can provide security to vulnerable people, such as seniors, who want to live at home but are concerned about their safety.

IoMT on the body:

On-body IoMT refers to the use of wearable medical devices linked to remote tracking or monitoring systems. On-body IoMT, as opposed to in-home IoMT, can frequently be used outside of the home while people go about their daily lives.

On-body consumer IoMT devices are wearable devices that can be purchased by anyone to track health metrics for personal use as well as sharing with healthcare providers. These devices can provide early warning signs for more serious health conditions in addition to tracking a standard metric like heart rate. The Apple Watch, for example, can alert users to irregular heart rhythms.

Clinical on-body IoMT devices, like consumer devices, offer a broader range of sensor options. Diabetic patients, for example, can wear glucose sensors to alert them to fluctuations in glucose levels. Many of these devices can send data directly to a patient’s doctor, ensuring that they receive prompt and accurate treatment.

IoMT in the Community:

Community The use of IoMT devices throughout a larger town or geographic area is referred to as IoMT. Mobility services, for example, are devices that track patients while they are in a vehicle. Similarly, paramedics and first responders use emergency response intelligence systems to track patient metrics outside of the hospital setting.

Community IoMT includes technologies that enable remote services in addition to mobile and emergency care. Point-of-care devices, for example, can be used by healthcare providers in non-traditional medical settings such as a field hospital, and kiosks can be used to dispense medicines to people in areas where traditional infrastructure is limited or non-existent.

IoMT devices may also be used in logistics by suppliers to aid in the transport of healthcare goods or medical equipment. Sensors, for example, can keep track of temperature- and pressure-sensitive shipping containers to ensure that quality is maintained throughout the shipping process.

IoMT in-hospital:

Hospitals must manage the quality and supply of their medical assets over time, as well as understand how personnel and patients move around the facility. Healthcare professionals use IoMT sensors and other tracking systems to record all of these interactions so that administrators have a complete picture of what is going on.

IoMT Obstacles:

Because the IoMT ecosystem has so many stakeholders, it presents some unique legal, regulatory, technical, and privacy challenges.

• Manufacturers of medical devices
• Providers of Internet access
• Manufacturers of original equipment (OEM)
• System/software vendors
• Integrators of systems
• Customers and clients

Legal ramifications:

It is not always clear who legally owns the data generated and shared by IoMT devices. For example, if a city-owned medical device collects data from a patient and stores it in a third-party cloud application before sharing it with a private healthcare organisation… Who owns the information? What about the city? What about the patient? Who is the software provider? What about the healthcare organisation?

The data can be used and shared in a variety of ways by various parties. The owner may have the right to delete the data, which can be complicated in a distributed network where data may be replicated multiple times.

Regulatory issues:

Because medical data is so sensitive, there is a lot of regulation about how and where it can be used, as well as specifications about how the technology should be secured. For example, the FDA issued extensive guidance on the Management of Cybersecurity in Medical Devices.

The European Union, the United Kingdom, and organisations such as the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation and the European Commission issued new guidelines and regulations concerning these devices.

Despite all of the regulations and guidance that have been issued, 66% of respondents in the Deloitte survey believe that the regulatory framework will not catch up with what is possible today for another five years.

Technical difficulties:

Because IoMT infrastructure is distributed, devices and software systems must be able to communicate securely with one another. However, the protocols and security standards for these integrations are constantly changing. As new technologies are introduced, compatibility issues may arise if older systems are unable to keep up with these changes.

Privacy and security issues:

IoMT data typically flows over the public Internet, exposing it to more security threats than a firewalled private network. This threat is exacerbated by the fact that the data is shared across multiple systems, resulting in multiple attack vectors.

OEMs must follow industry best practises in terms of security, and administrators should use the most recent encryption protocols, as well as unique and complex passwords for access and validating remote systems’ SSL certificates.

How to Secure IoMT Devices Correctly:

There are numerous variables at work in IoMT security, and there is no easy way to protect all medical devices from all types of threats. However, a fundamental first step is to ensure that you are aware of which medical devices are present on your network and the types of threats that may affect them.

Order recommends a zero-trust network security model in which device communication is governed by strict access control and authentication to ensure that traffic is coming from where it should be. All of your connected medical devices can be seen and secured using the Ordr Systems Control Engine (SCE). Try out an Ordr demo to learn how to keep your IoMT devices—and the data they collect—safe.