Course: Information Systems for Managers

Internal Assignment Applicable for December 2020 Examination

Five Main Benefits of IoT in Healthcare

Internet of Things and healthcare gain more popularity every year. It means that such a solution has
several vital benefits. Let’s discuss them more precisely.

Health Monitoring

Smart devices can track health conditions. IoT applications for healthcare can send an emergency
signal if the patient has an asthma attack, heart failure, or another medical issue.

For example, Apple has integrated a Fall Detection System in Apple Watch. It detects if the user falls
and shows an alert. The person needs to tap ‘I’m OK’ for one minute. In another case, AppleWatch
calls emergency services. They also send a message to emergency contacts.

Better Patient Experience

IoT in hospitals improves the healthcare system, gives patients a more comfortable way to get in touch
with doctors. It leads to improving patient experience and gaining customer loyalty. The hospital from
New York, USA — Mt. Sinai Medical Center — managed to reduce the waiting time for 50% of their
emergency patients using AutoBed software.

The hospital has approximately 1,100 beds, but admits at least 59,000 of patients. The primary task of
AutoBed is matching available beds with new patients.

Drug Management

One of the Internet of Things healthcare benefits is better drug management. IoT technology allows
controlling the amount of taken medicine. Doctors can monitor the dose and track effectiveness of
treatment.

Also, the Internet of Things allows sending reminders to patients when they should take their drugs. In
some cases, it’s possible to notify the family member when the patient hasn’t taken medicine on time.
Healthcare Automation

IoT devices can help automate administrative, manual, and routine tasks. Internet of Things medical
applications can analyze a significant amount of information and create different metrics to see any
changes in the patients’ health conditions.

Automated processes of collecting data can reduce the number of errors in making diagnosis.

Preventive Healthcare

A lot of people die from chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and more. Using the
analytic capabilities of IoT, it’s possible to provide patients with more personalized forms of treatment
and care.

Smart, Connected or Wearable devices can monitor health conditions of elderly or patients with
chronic diseases. Having all that data, doctors will be able to give a better treatment and see the first
symptoms of the disease.

Advantages of IoT in Healthcare

The ‘all-consuming’ connection of health devices and data centralization
brings many significant benefits to the table, such as:

 All-around technological enhancement. Rendering hospital visits

unnecessary, passively accumulating and deeply analyzing important
health data, etc. We’ve already pondered on all these advanced tech
capacities galore enough. The IoMT provides space for fantastic long-
term innovations.
 Cost savings. One of the greatest advantages of IoT in healthcare is that
efficient autonomous systems will cost less to manage and ‘employ’ in
the long run. Things are even better when it comes to patient cost
savings due to fewer hospital journeys as well as accelerated
diagnostics and treatment.
 Accessibility. Doctors can view all the necessary data on command and
check real-time patient conditions without leaving their office.
Disadvantages of IoT in Healthcare
Alternatively, some downsides that come along with the massive
implementation of the IoT in healthcare include:

 Privacy can be potentially undermined. As we’ve already mentioned,

systems get hacked. Lots of attention will need to be focused on data
security, which requires significant additional spendings.
 Unauthorized access to centralization. There is a chance that
dishonest interlopers may access centralized systems and realize some
cruel intentions.
 Global healthcare regulations. International health administrations
are already issuing guidelines that must be strictly followed by
governmental medical establishments integrating the IoT in their
workflow. These may restrict possible capacities to some extent.

1. Netmeds.com, one of the largest e-pharmacies claims more than 3.7 million customers in over
610 cities and towns. The market size of e-pharmacies was approximately $512 million (Rs 3,500
crore) in 2018. It is predicted that there will be a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63
per cent which will reach $3.6 billion (Rs 25,000 crore) by 2022. Explain how information systems
help in managing the supplies of medicines by online pharmacies and delivering them to
customers.
Answer:

How e-pharmacy is beneficial to customers

An online pharmacy can effectively address multiple issues the Indian healthcare
consumer and system face.

1. Consumer convenience: The consumers would be able to order medicines in a

convenient manner, from their mobile or computer. This will significantly help
patients who are already sick and not in a condition to go out to find a pharmacy

2. Consumer access: Online platforms can aggregate supplies, making otherwise

hard to find medicines available to consumers across the country. Offline
pharmacies can only keep limited inventory, resulting in a consumer having to ask
multiple stores to get his or her medicine

3. Consumer education: Online pharmacies have the technology infrastructure to

provide value added information to consumers, such as drug interactions, side
effects, medicine reminders, and information on cheaper substitutes. The more
aware consumers will always benefit from the power of knowledge, which is easily
distributed through the electronic medium.
4. Data records: All medicine purchases can be tracked - effectively reducing the
problem of drug abuse and self-medication.

5. Medicine authenticity: With full tracking systems and solid technology backend,

counterfeit medicines can be traced back to the channel/ manufacturer/ supplier,
thereby making the market a lot more transparent and ensuring that authenticity is
strictly maintained.

6. Transaction records: Organized online players would have systematic records

for all transactions, with full taxes paid on each transaction. A great benefit to the
state considering the size of the market

7. Data analytics: Online pharmacies can store and analyse large amounts of data
on consumers across the nation which can be very useful for planning public health
policies

8. Industry sustainability: An online pharmacy model will enable existing

pharmacies to start online operations and serve a broader set of customers, or a
network of pharmacies integrating to one platform and accessing a broader
customer base while also ensuring that the inventory is consolidated. "This would
reduce working capital requirements, remove wastage from system and increase
margins, making the pharmacy model sustainable and higher value add," says
Tandon.

E-pharmacy is well aligned to objectives of national development

According to industry experts, an online pharmacy aligns very well with national
development objectives and has clear and tangible benefit to consumers as well as
the industry. Across the world, it has been seen that growth of ecommerce and
retail are complimentary and reinforce each other. Traditional brick and mortal
retailers also innovate and strengthen their operations by leveraging e-commerce
to reach more consumers.

The small sector of organized pharmacy retail in India would get a huge boost and
a full industry can be transformed by leveraging the internet in a smart way.
Besides, internet-based transactions are well aligned to address key known issues
in pharmacy retail – tracking for authenticity, traceability of medicine, abuse
prevention, addressing consumption of drugs without prescription, tax loss and
value added services for consumer empowerment in healthcare, which are all key
areas of national development. Besides, this would also enable doctors to adopt e-
prescriptions in a big way – addressing the significant issue of errors due to
misreading of doctors’ hand writing as well as recording of data for public health
planning.

Industry experts say it is, thus, the right time as a country to define the regulatory
framework to help e-pharmacy have a clear-cut operating model, in line with the
concerns of the regulator, while providing benefits to the customers.