A Survey of Healthcare Internet of Things (HIoT): A Clinical Perspective

In combination with current sociological trends, the maturing development of Internet of Things devices is projected to revolutionize healthcare. A network of body-worn sensors, each with a unique ID, can collect health data, that is, orders-of-magnitude richer than what is available today from sporadic observations in clinical/hospital environments. When databased, analyzed, and compared against information from other individuals using data analytics, Healthcare Internet of Things data enables the personalization and modernization of care with radical improvements in outcomes and reductions in cost. In this article, we survey the existing and emerging technologies that can enable this vision for the future of healthcare, particularly, in the clinical practice of healthcare. Three main technology areas underlie the development of this field: 1) sensing, where there is an increased drive for miniaturization and power efficiency; 2) communications, where the enabling factors are ubiquitous connectivity, standardized protocols, and the wide availability of cloud infrastructure; and 3) data analytics and inference, where the availability of large amounts of data and computational resources is revolutionizing algorithms for individualizing inference and actions in health management. Throughout this article, we use a case study to concretely illustrate the impact of these trends. We conclude this article with a discussion of the emerging directions, open issues, and challenges.