The roll-out of 5G across the entire world is going to largely affect how we connect and network with each other. In business, 5G will boost the stability and connectivity of existing Internet of Things (IoT) applications while bolstering new IoT systems. It won’t take long for our cities, homes, and ways of living to adapt to all of the benefits 5G will bring, not to mention the added communication abilities, like staying in touch while traveling or connecting to the car next to you in traffic.

Ultimately, 5G will effect change in society, digitalization, and economies in almost all aspects of life and business, but for now, 5G operators are working to ensure mobile connectivity is strong and stable before expanding their focus to other industries and fields. Once that’s done, work will pivot to optimizing connectivity across consumers, businesses, and supply chains.

The Growing Need for Connectivity

Every year, the world’s data volume increases, and with more Internet-enabled devices than ever, 5G has become crucial. Soon, existing technologies won’t be able to meet IoT’s requirements unless 5G is available everywhere. As an example, in 2017, Germany doubled its data volume from 2015, reaching 1 billion gigabytes in a single year.

Experts calculated the number of connected devices and sensors reached between 50 and 500 billion in 2020. With these numbers growing every year, 5G offers unlimited possibilities for our global economy and productivity. Once we reach a certain global data volume, we will need 5G to maintain and scale up business and consumer needs.

LTE Today, 5G Tomorrow

3G made it possible for us to use our phones on a mobile connection with relative ease and speed, and it catalyzed the popularity and manufacturing of smartphones. With the roll-out of 4G LTE, data transfer rates skyrocketed, and it remains the most popular and most-used network even today. 4G LTE offers speeds up to 100 megabits per second, although many of us will experience those speeds first-hand on and off.

It’s possible to boost LTE bandwidths for download speeds up to 4,000 megabits (4 gigabits) per second, and while this is super fast, LTE was designed for smartphone use. On the other hand, 5G will be optimized from the ground-up for IoT connectivity. 5G speeds are faster than much of the Wi-Fi connections available around the world: stable speeds up to 20 gigabits per second aren’t out of the question with 5G.

In comparison, the first smartphones with 1G were eight million times slower than phones will be with 5G. When you put it that way, it seems 5G opens up all kinds of new doors. Now we can dream of transmitting data in real-time with no quality loss. We can theoretically connect 100 billion mobile devices around the world and access them all at the same time. 5G offers stable connection quality and an obvious increase in speeds (moving up to 500 kilometers per hour). That’s like driving from New York City to Los Angeles in nine hours, rather than the 41 hours it would normally take by car.

And besides smartphones, in our increasingly digital world, 5G will be a major asset in applications to many areas and industries. As a result, 5G will become the key technology for connectivity in the near future.

Unlimited Potential

In addition to IoT, the Industrial IoT, a major consumer of mobile connectivity technology, will benefit immensely from 5G. 5G will offer continuous connectivity and data transmission between robots, systems, machines, and people. And analysis will be done on-demand using edge computing, which is an emerging technology that we won’t be able to utilize fully without 5G.

The number of connected sensors and devices is expected to grow at a massive rate, and problems will be pinpointed in real-time rather than after the fact. Optimization can be done in real-time (or close to it), minimizing downtime, revenue loss, and loss of productivity. 5G will enable humanless tasks, not just in driving, but for industrial tasks like picking up and delivering goods, machine-to-machine communication, and loading and unloading materials.

Connectivity in a Digital World

Digital transformation (thanks in part to the pandemic) is driving the growth and expansion of many emerging technologies. But in the field of network connectivity, digital transformation is leading the charge for what to focus on and for use cases. High-quality connectivity is the most important end goal of 5G, especially for both large and small IoT systems. A dropped connection could lead to the factory floor production getting halted.

IoT and 5G experts know that all of the possibilities are still unmapped and unknown. As we arm ourselves with more stable and scalable emerging technologies, we will uncover more ideas, innovations, and opportunities that were previously thought of as unfeasible. Smart farming, which involves keeping an eye on all animals at any given time, crop health, soil moisture, changing weather, and much more, will finally be possible and closer to real-time observation than ever before. Accordingly, we’ll see a large increase in sustainability and efficiency in food production.

5G’s Prospects

Although we don’t know when 5G will reach market maturity, it’s obvious that it will bring about more possibilities, efficiencies, and connectivity than we’ve ever experienced before. It’s unclear what new ideas will be unlocked by the power of 5G. But one thing is certain: The world will never be the same when this next level of network connectivity is fully realized.

Telehealth has changed how we treat and care for those who have medical maladies and are vulnerable. The latest innovations in this field are enabling people to live safer, fuller lives without the need for constant human supervision. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear; more healthcare facilities than ever before are embracing telemedicine in an effort to keep patients from in-person appointments that risk exposure to the deadly virus.

Recent telehealth innovations such as wearables heavily rely on the Internet of Things. With this technological paradigm, we can securely transmit and analyze data in order to unearth life-improving care plans. These capabilities allow aging populations to continue to live in their own homes while reducing the burden that many care facilities are experiencing at the moment. In this post, we’ll examine the benefits of furthering telehealth connectivity innovation and the factors needed to make it happen.

Enabling Patient Independence

Good connectivity is essential for three types of telehealth monitoring: passive, active, and condition.

Passive monitoring deals with medical applications and technologies in the patient’s home that quietly monitor his or her behavior. These devices usually only initiate action if they notice something concerning. For instance, the Alcuris Memo Hub connects a variety of smart devices around a patient’s home, like a tea kettle, TV, and lighting. If this platform notices a change in the patient’s typical pattern of behavior, it will issue an alert. It can also observe and trigger an alert for gradual changes that may indicate a revision to a health regimen is required.

Active monitoring entails devices such as panic buttons and two-way intercoms. In summation, these devices require proactive action, either from the patient or a caretaker.

Lastly, as its name implies, condition monitoring involves the monitoring of specific health conditions. It combines aspects of the first two approaches we’ve discussed with detailed health data, like blood pressure, heart rate, and movement.

Simplicity Is Essential

Digital health innovations help improve the quality of life for aging populations as well as patients living with chronic conditions and disabilities. They also help lower the costs and resources needed for adequate healthcare delivery for these cases.

Ensuring that telehealth devices have enough connectivity to reliably capture, share, and analyze data is absolutely necessary. Without proper connectivity, wrong conclusions (and consequently, outcomes) could be reached. But these connected devices need one more feature to take telehealth to the next level: the ability to work right out of the box.

Telehealth device manufacturers should configure their devices to seamlessly connect to a healthcare provider’s system seamlessly without any complexities. They should also be able to work anywhere, whether that’s Beijing or Los Angeles. Making telehealth devices and platforms plug-and-play is imperative since a large portion of their audience may not be tech-savvy or have the time to set up complicated systems.

Overcoming Connectivity Obstacles

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, chances are good that you have some experience with mobile phones. This means you’re also painfully familiar with the occurrence of black spots where your mobile device can’t receive a strong, reliable signal. Can you imagine this conundrum for a device that your life depends on?

When a patient’s life is on the line, we cannot compromise on connectivity. To mitigate this issue, telehealth devices should be capable of selecting the best network based on its location and even change between networks to minimize drop-out time. During a critical moment, a dropped connection can mean the difference between life and death. So any device in the telehealth market should offer strong, reliable, and continuous connectivity.

To ensure optimal connectivity, medical device makers must consider its importance from the start of the design process. This often translates to a few common factors for the device. For example, it must be lightweight, easy to operate, robust, and unobtrusive. Often, these elements restrict the design of these devices, which is something that manufacturers may have not dealt with before if they previously focused on larger or fixed devices.

On top of this, manufacturers must also think through what occurs at the back end of their telehealth devices. Do they connect to a cloud service through which analyses are run? Or is the data being transmitted to another human who needs convenient access to it? In this case, how should the information be presented? Alongside connectivity, this focus on communication must also be considered at the beginning of the design stage.

Don’t Forget Security

End-to-end security is always crucial for anything that handles sensitive data such as telehealth devices. Whether it’s your hardware or software, all of your connectivity platforms must be secured properly in order for your device to work effectively.

Unfortunately, several consumer SIMs lack advanced security protocols. They actually send data over standard internet channels, which increases the risk of this information being stolen or lost. To mitigate this, prioritize security early on in the device design phase.

Numerous IoT manufacturers treat device security as an afterthought. As we know from the IoT industry’s track record with data breaches, this has not worked out well. The same mistakes cannot be made when it comes to the personal data of patients.

Dedicated end-to-end security solutions are usually the best for telehealth devices. This involves measures such as data encryption at the device level, communication through trusted private networks and secure gateways, authentication, and authorization.

If you want to take things a step further (which is never a bad idea), add in data flow monitoring tools to detect any unusual activity. These could be your first indicators of a malicious attack taking place. Lastly, consider consulting a third-party pen tester before deployment.

Are You Ready for the Future of Telehealth?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of how connectivity can help accelerate telehealth innovation. It may not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think of new capabilities in digital medicine, but it’s certainly among the most important. By emphasizing connectivity during the design of a telehealth device, you’re able to give patients and providers more peace of mind and unlock better outcomes for both parties.

Have you had any unusual experiences with telehealth connectivity? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

And although this brings about more efficiency and productivity at the end of the day, we must still prioritize cybersecurity in IoT applications used by the media and entertainment industries. Without adequate and robust security protocols, there are substantial consequences. For example, major releases could lose significant amounts of revenue by hackers who publish the film ahead of its premiere.

IoT in Entertainment

IoT is being used in media and entertainment applications in a variety of interesting ways from Hollywood in Los Angeles to Bollywood in Bombay. First, the industry is using IoT to increase its customer base and profitability. By getting an idea of their customers, preferences, and household demographics, companies are building more accurate profiles of where their revenue comes from using data taken from social media, wearables, mobile devices, surveys, and more. This allows companies to develop or acquire more content that meshes well with their main audience, which in turn increases profit.

Having user profiles of customers yields incredible insights through advertising efforts. Ads can be targeted more granularly and with more focused copy and visuals. As the effectiveness of an ad campaign grows, the return on investment exponentially increases for the company by reaching other customers that have similar traits and by convincing existing customers to buy.

On the other hand, companies can include better-targeted advertisements in their media according to what their customers prefer in content and ad delivery. They can also schedule the media to run at a time when their customers are already watching something else they enjoy. Lastly, companies can run marketing campaigns and promotional offers at highly effective times as a result of knowing their customer base.

For theme parks and cruises, sensors and electronic bracelets create a new technological, hands-free experience for customers. These bracelets allow theme parks and cruises to track their customers’ movements for analysis and optimization. IoT also helps companies utilize preventative maintenance of media equipment based on sensor data.

While IoT is bringing about better customer experiences for the media and entertainment industry, it’s also opening up companies to cybersecurity incidents and hacking attempts. The industry is already being attacked frequently, especially around big releases, but we can fortify our efforts to prevent malicious attackers from successfully gaining access to sensitive and private data.

The Current State of Security

It’s crucial for media and entertainment companies to figure out what their customers want, and the data generated and collected in the search for answers to these problems are highly sought-after. Data usage is prominent in the industry, and success depends upon relationships between partners, the company and the customer, and the customers and the content. Thus, it’s imperative that a company’s reputation is known to be secure, trustworthy, and friendly.

When a company in the industry is developing and distributing a creative product, it uses outside vendors often to achieve various goals. For this purpose, IoT is a great tool. But because this creates more complexity in workflows and processes, it can become complicated to secure assets and information.

According to research by Hiscox, more than half of surveyed media and entertainment companies had three or more cyber attacks over a 12-month period. This is no small number, especially because these companies are managing extremely sensitive data like financial, consumer, and personal information. What’s worse is that outside vendors hired in the past are also being targeted, which could compromise the entire supply chain.

Strengthening Security

To reinforce a media and entertainment company’s security procedures and protocols, there are three key areas to concentrate on. First, the prevention of attacks and successful hacks is paramount. This can be accomplished by accurately assessing any and all risks and vulnerabilities to the company and its data. Cybersecurity should be prioritized from the start of any project that involves IoT technology and devices or sensors. Staff must be trained to adequately recognize when a malicious attack is occurring.

Second, detection is an important area to focus on. Track all attempted hacks and attacks and analyze the time of day, day of the week, country of origin, and other dimensions to find a pattern that you can act upon. Develop a coordinated response plan to enact if an attack is discovered. And set up a secure portal that employees can use to report any issues or intrusions.

Lastly, mitigate, mitigate, mitigate. Implementing IoT technology is no small or inexpensive feat. After you’ve worked hard to develop a plan, train employees, and analyze past attack attempts, don’t let your efforts fall to the wayside. Mitigation involves prevention, detection, containment, and assessment of cyberattacks. It also includes a continuous review of security upgrades and updates to devices and software.

Many industries, including the media and entertainment industry, overestimate security and underestimate their risk. In almost all cases, your company could always be doing more to protect your assets and information.

IoT Innovation in Entertainment Is Just Starting

Don’t delay in implementing IoT technology if it’s the right tool to take your company and profits to the next level. Cybersecurity is a major concern, but it mustn’t scare you from utilizing IoT in your business operations — the benefits far outweigh the negatives. To be safe, keep your assets well-guarded with a strong security plan and solution from the get-go.

How have you experienced IoT in entertainment? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

By 2030, the United States is expected to have a tech talent shortage. This year alone, 4.3 million jobs in America’s technology sector are projected to go unfilled — that equates to lost revenue of $162 billion. Luckily, Ted Lieu, California’s 33rd Congressional District Representative, has a solution for the state: Inspire our youth to innovate with the Congressional App Challenge.

Held last Thursday, the 2020 Congressional App Challenge featured sixteen students from ten high schools across Los Angeles County. Altogether, they submitted eleven amazing mobile app concepts. And Congressman Lieu invited Marc Fischer, Dogtown Media’s Co-Founder and CEO, to participate as a judge in the competition!

About the Congressional App Challenge

The United States House of Representatives established the Congressional App Challenge in 2014 to “connect today’s Congress with tomorrow’s coders.” The event encourages students from all corners of the country to get more hands-on with their STEM education by creating and submitting mobile app concepts. The winner receives national recognition and also has their work featured in Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Building!

For Congressman Ted Lieu, the event is a special occasion that connects him back to his own education: “As one of just four computer science majors in Congress, I believe it is essential to encourage and nurture a generation of technology-savvy students who will continue to innovate our economy and advance our technological edge. The App Challenge provides young students throughout my district an opportunity to pursue their creative and technical talents. I encourage all eligible students to participate.”

Since its first year, the Congressional App Challenge has grown exponentially. In 2019, 10,211 students submitted mobile apps. To put this number in perspective, that’s a 373% increase from 2016! This event also now outpaces Silicon valley in terms of diversity: Compared to America’s tech innovation hub, participants are five times more likely to identify as latinx, four times more likely to identify as black, and two times more likely to identify as female.

On the other side of the equation, the Congressional App Challenge is also increasing STEM’s visibility in politics. Since 2016, 54% more Congress members have become involved in the competition and the mentions of STEM and computer science in congress have grown by over 2000%.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s reception was completely remote. Dr. William Goodin, Industry Relations Coordinator at UCLA’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Mr. Howard Stahl, Santa Monica College’s Department Chair for Computer Science & Information Systems, judged this year’s submissions alongside Marc.

And the Winners Are…

Dylan and Winston Iskandar of Mira Costa High School and Chadwick School were selected as this year’s winners! Inspired by the ‘new normal’ we all find ourselves in during the COVID-19 pandemic, the duo developed a mobile app called “GroceryBuddies” that connects volunteers with at-risk individuals so they can help them run errands and get groceries. You can learn more about it in the video below:

Jake and Kate North of Stanford Online High School came in second place with their mobile app concept, “Ideos.” “MyChemistry,” a pocket-reference tool for chemistry information that was developed by Rachel Fox of Agoura High School, came in third place:

And “MaskCheck,” an app created by Jayden Bulexa of Beverly Hills High School that helps to educate people about and enforce mask-wearing, received an honorable mention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8cHHSW9wPY&feature=youtu.be

Each of these entries was incredibly innovative. “As a recovering Computer Science major, I am inspired by all these students who have committed themselves to creating these innovative apps,” Congressman Lieu said.

Marc was also astounded by the level of creativity and quality that these young mobile app developers brought to the table: “It’s an exciting honor to witness the next generation of innovators harness the potential of STEM to improve our lives. I thank Congressman Lieu for the opportunity to help inspire, educate, and foster a passion for technology in our youth.”

It’s absolutely amazing that there’s so much young tech talent in the Los Angeles County area alone! We can’t wait to see what 2021’s participants have to offer.

At-home patient care has made great strides in the past decade, with the advancement of technology in IV infusion pumps, CPAP machines, and asthma inhalers. Unfortunately, because patients often misuse or underuse their at-home medical devices, providers often see poorer outcomes for their patients when compared to those who regularly use their home-based medical devices.

Tracking these outcomes and patient home situations are difficult for a variety of reasons: lack of knowledge of how devices are being used, how often and how exactly they’re used for off-label purposes, how much they malfunction, how often and how they are misused, and how effective they are when used properly and as intended. But by adding the Internet of Things (IoT) into the mix, medical applications can track usage, monitor devices, and analyze the output to provide clinicians, insurers, researchers, regulators, and device manufacturers realistic data. This data can be used to measure outcomes and optimize the next generation of medical devices.

Staying Healthy at Home

Before the pandemic, non-clinical settings like the workplace or home were growing in popularity for medical devices developed and meant for use in a medical setting. But with the current state of things, at-home medical devices are more important than ever to ensure patients stay safe and at home. At-home care is more convenient, easier on the wallet, and eases anxiety for the patient. It also helps patients avoid exposure to other illnesses at the doctor’s office or at the hospital.

Experts say IoT should be incorporated into any medical device that could be used in a non-clinical setting. IoT technology generates real-time data all day and night, and it can notify a provider if the patient is misusing or underusing their medical machine. It also can detect malfunctions, inefficiencies, and maintenance problems before the machine breaks down and leaves the patient without a device.

Infusion Pumps for IV

There are public IV bars where you can go for an IV boost if you’re feeling down or exhausted from physical exertion. These pumps are being sent home more often with patients for antibiotic delivery, hydration, parenteral (meaning outside of the mouth and digestive tract) nutrition, and post-operative pain management. When you go to a public IV bar, you’ll be injected by a registered or certified nurse.

Infusion pumps are complex to use, and each model from every manufacturer has different controls and prompts to learn. As a result, patients can accidentally mess up the dosage or insert the wrong IV bag or medication if they’re not paying attention and taking multiple medications. With IoT, we can keep track of dosage, inventory, and monitor the time of day usage, temperature, heart rate, and the patient’s qualitative condition to help patients avoid these errors. IoT applications can also alert the patient’s medical provider if there are any serious predicted problems as well as speak directly to the patient to help them learn how to better interact with their infusion pump.

CPAP Machines

CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machines are becoming increasingly popular for home treatment. These machines help patients with obstructive sleep apnea, which increases blood pressure, causes atrial fibrillation, and escalates the effects of heart disease. For patients who first get a CPAP machine at their home, there is initial discomfort as well as a significant learning curve. Additionally, patients don’t see immediate benefits to using the machine because it takes time for the effects to become apparent.

As a result, patients find it difficult to adhere to their PAP therapy, and less than 50% of patients use their CPAP machine for over four hours a night. This machine delivers the best therapy for sleep apnea, but it’s so uncomfortable to use that patients would rather take the risk of causing other health issues than keep it on all night. Insurance companies have become circumspect about buying expensive CPAP machines for patients and have started renting machines with monitoring installed to patients instead. If the patient wants to keep the machine long-term, they can eventually buy the machine from the insurance company.

With IoT technology, physicians can monitor their patients and analyze data about underuse of the machine. This can help the provider start a frank conversation with the patient geared towards improving the patient’s experience with the CPAP machine. Because insurance companies often try to get out of paying for replacement supplies like tubing, filters, and masks for patients, IoT technology can help the patient make a stronger case for their consistent usage of the machine. Unfortunately, many patients find the monitoring and rent-to-buy business model intrusive and inappropriate.

Inhalers for Asthma

For patients with asthma and breathing problems living in wildfire-prone areas like Los Angeles or polluted areas like New Delhi, living life “normally” can be extremely difficult for half of the year. Because these patients often cannot go outside without triggering an attack or episode, it’s imperative that the patient maintains their wellness from the comfort of their own home. But metered-dose inhalers (MDI) are frequently misused by patients, leading to uncontrolled asthma that comes with life-threatening risk. When this irreversible event occurs, the patient’s provider will often increase their MDI dosage or prescribe a more powerful medication.

When a patient is experiencing a breathing episode, they face difficulty in correctly administering their MDI because it requires hand-lung coordination, proper inhalation, and physical dexterity. But if you’ve ever used an inhaler, you know that there is no feedback to show that you administered the inhaler correctly or effectively. You have to wait a minute or so to see if breathing got easier for you. As a result, it’s easy to forget a step or become overwhelmed by the fear that you’re unable to breathe correctly.

The most common trend over time for the patient is to underuse the MDI, which requires excess use of rescue medication and increases the risk of a serious or life-threatening episode. Providers cannot go off of the patient’s recall memory about how well they used their MDI; it’s been shown that patients tend to misremember how well they administered their MDI medication. But new MDIs provide some hope: they can measure and monitor how much of the medication is reaching the patient’s lungs, how the device is being used, and under what circumstances the patient needed their MDI. With this data available, the patient’s provider can tailor their training, device selection, and messaging to the specific patient’s needs. The provider can even make changes to what device they prescribe for future patients.

Keeping up with Therapy at Home

Because the very nature of IoT is to generate data in real-time without any sort of break from monitoring machines, the data should help patients and providers become more communicative, more empathetic, and more understanding. No patient wants to end up in the emergency room for underusing their medication, and IoT can help patients avoid the risk of becoming hospitalized by creating a more transparent patient experience and by alerting providers sooner.

The healthcare industry is embracing emerging technologies at an unprecedented rate. Consequently, it’s an exciting time for medical app developers, investors, physicians, and patients. But which technologies should you keep a close eye on? Here are the advancements you can expect to see in the next few years.

1. Holistic Cloud Integration

The collection of digital data is obviously vital to the advancement of modern healthcare. But how you share this information is perhaps more important to the success of your endeavors.

More than 90% of medical institutions are hosting applications through the cloud. But this usage of the cloud is fragmented. Look around and you’ll find that health organizations are applying the cloud in data hosting, clinical apps, and backing up their systems. But keeping these discrete initiatives separate forms silos, which in turn limits the potential functionality of the data.

Cloud integration enables healthcare facilities to open up their silos and connect the dots in their data. Tom Lawry, Microsoft’s Director for AI in Health and Life Sciences, thinks this will eventually transform the medical field. “The transformation that’s brought about by the cloud and bringing that data together allows for all kinds of interesting things,” he says. “That to us is the number one transformational aspect going forward for the next few years.”

2. Better Infrastructure = Accessible Healthcare

COVID-19 has shined a light on how essential telehealth and remote patient monitoring are, especially for those with chronic health conditions. And for many people in the United States, these avenues of medicine are often the most convenient and practical to use.

“A majority of this country is still rural,” explains Rhonda Collins, the Chief Nursing Officer at Vocera. Collins is also the Founder of the American Nurse Project. “So, we need to rely on technology to fill gaps in human connections in healthcare-telehealth will be more important going forward, as infrastructure and technology continue to improve.”

Before telehealth came along, it could be difficult to find proper treatment for a malady if you weren’t living in a substantially populated area like New York City or Los Angeles. This conundrum becomes a much more grave matter when you consider that 50% of US counties contain people that have high chronic disease occurrences and a great need for better broadband connectivity. That’s equitable to over 36 million people.

Poor internet connectivity undoubtedly makes remote consultations with doctors extremely difficult. But Collins believes the situation is improving. Eventually, it will become readily apparent to all that telehealth technology will be an invaluable tool for those living in remote or rural regions. But there’s still some work to be done.

An August 2018 Healthline survey found that 46% of Medicare Advantage members were not sure if telehealth was a viable option for them. If that wasn’t troubling enough, 37% of the survey respondents believed it wasn’t available for them, even though it was.

To make this issue worse, numerous hospitals are still contending with inconsistent Wi-Fi and cellular service. In turn, this impedes telehealth services. “These basic issues make it very difficult to bring technology in to provide extraordinary care and connectivity to all patients everywhere,” says Collins. “Infrastructure upgrades are a must, and that should be the focus of many hospitals, so they can leverage great technologies that improve the lives of patients and clinicians alike.”

We have no doubt that these infrastructure upgrades will arrive with time. As noted before, COVID-19 has accelerated our usage of telehealth offerings. Let’s hope that these services become even more ubiquitous in the near future.

3. Accelerated AI Adoption

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) has been a game-changer for several industries, and healthcare is no exception. But all of the use cases we’ve seen so far for this field will pale in comparison to what’s to come.

A July 2018 survey of 200 medical professionals by Intel found 37% of participants to be applying AI in limited ways. 54% of them believed that AI will see widespread adoption by 2023. For John Doyle, the Director of Global Business Strategy for Microsoft Healthcare, this adoption translates to AI affecting all aspects of a medical institution’s workflow.

Doyle believes that medical image analysis, dataset interpretation, clinical workflows, and real-time insights from medical sensor data name just a few factors that will be impacted by AI. As a result, it’s safe to assume that AI will disrupt how healthcare providers engage with patients and streamline various complicated processes.

4. Consumer-Centric Workflows

Over the next decade, Collins hopes that healthcare will adopt more technologies that the average consumer is accustomed to.

Today, a hospital employee can make dinner reservations, converse with friends, and purchase event tickets from their phones, all in just 15 minutes before their shift. But the technology landscape of their workplace is a stark contrast. Collins fears that this difference could deter younger generations from working in the field.

“When millennials go to work at a hospital, we are asking doctors, nurses and care teams to step back 20 years and use landline phones, fax machines, pagers, and overhead calls — all of which downgrade and add complexity to our millennial workforce,” Collins explains. “… As younger people continue to enter the workforce, many hospitals will be forced to modernize.”

We don’t know about you, but the thought of relying on fax machines for medical work today frightens us! Here’s hoping that Collins’ predictions come true sooner rather than later.

5. More Personalized Medical Care

Emerging technologies like machine learning, AI, and blockchain are destined to augment the abilities of clinicians in the next 10 years. According to Dr. Anil Jain, the VP and Chief Health Information Officer of IBM Watson Health, this will lead to more personalized specialized care for patients.

Jain says, “The biggest thing is going to be our ability to use these advanced technology enablers to get much better at doing personalized medicine and personalized healthcare with our patients.” Leveraging these technological capabilities on the back-end will enable providers to seamlessly and swiftly account for crucial data such as genomic profiles and social determinants of health.

According to Jain, more personalized treatment options will likely increase care plan adherence, especially for those suffering from chronic conditions. It will also cut out the back-and-forth usually involved in evidence-based approaches; physicians will likely see higher success rates in the first set of treatments offered.

What Medical Tech Excites You?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief glimpse into the future of healthcare technology! In truth, this list only scratches the surface of the myriad changes that technology will bring to the field of medicine.

What technological advancements are you excited to see in healthcare? Which developments should be covered in a future article of ours? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

As we roll into the 2020s, we’re looking forward to how technology is going to vastly improve healthcare, and more specifically, the patient experience. Before the turn of the decade, we saw several new tech trends that will be implemented in the coming years. In this first part of our healthcare tech trends series, we’ll cover how artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), electronic health records (EHRs), 5G, blockchain, and chatbots will transform our medical experiences — and unlock a healthier future for us all.

The Promise of AI and ML

The rapid development of AI and ML are allowing us to apply these innovative emerging technologies to healthcare already; every year, the impact these two fields are making on healthcare grows larger. From automating patient follow-up and appointment-setting to enabling a robot to assist patients, AI has the potential to change and save lives.

Experts predict that consumers will eventually buy the latest AI-enabled healthcare apps to monitor and optimize their health without having to visit a doctor’s office.

But patients aren’t the only benefactors of AI in healthcare: therapists can use clinical AI robots to administer cognitive behavioral therapy, radiologists can employ AI to help them detect or dismiss health conditions, and robots can reduce paperwork for administrators. When providers and administrators experience time savings, patients wait less, services cost less, and diagnoses can become more accurate.

Improving EHRs

Patient medical records are currently in a disarray. In the US, if you move out of state, there’s a good chance that your new provider will be using a different EHR system than your previous provider.

These records come in a wide variety of forms that contain different facets of information. For example, EHRs contain general patient information, treatment plans, diagnoses, progress notes, surgery results, lab results, outcomes, and much more. The information could be attached as audio, video, or a piece of paper.

In the 2020s, experts want to see providers move to common EHRs so patients can seamlessly take their information to another doctor’s office. For medical professionals, EHRs save tons of time by allowing the provider to skip the usual basic questions and dig into other areas that may have been neglected in the past.

Patients can be reached through text and email without a receptionist having to lift a finger. And best of all, EHRs can’t get lost, burned, or stolen by a malicious party. They’re built with enhanced levels of cybersecurity and access levels to prevent data theft.

Seamless 5G Connectivity

5G has only been implemented in a few select cities like Los Angeles, so we haven’t experienced the true benefits of this cellular technology within our healthcare system yet. But when it becomes more widespread, we’re going to see 5G become a turning point for healthcare IT infrastructure. Most people’s experience with hospital Wi-Fi is that it’s either non-existent or mind-numbingly slow.

With 5G, a hospital can truly become connected. Remotely monitoring patients in real-time, paging doctors immediately when something doesn’t look right, and faster loading speeds for those huge medical image files are some of the first improvements 5G will bring.

Down the line, ambulances en-route can send the emergency room staff the patient’s EHR without any latency issues, families can monitor their loved ones without the risk of contaminating their hospital room, and a concierge robot can keep you posted about your loved ones’ vitals, rather than you having to bug a very busy nurse.

Imagine using a 5G network to remotely train physicians for surgery and administration, a remote surgery taking place internationally on a 5G network, and AI working in real-time to analyze patients across the entire hospital.

It’s difficult to predict exactly how we’ll use 5G over the next decade, but experts expect 5G to completely transform several aspects of the patient experience.

Implementing Blockchain

Blockchain is a trendy technology that many people dismissed as an overhyped paradigm that didn’t hold much potential for medical applications. But because blockchains have built-in anonymity and security, it turns out that it’s actually the perfect technology to implement in healthcare.

Using blockchain to secure EHRs would create records of who accessed which record at what time. It anonymizes EHRs so that hackers can’t steal personal or identifiable information using cryptography.

One of blockchain’s best features is that peer networks copy blockchains in real-time, so if the original blockchain was ever corrupted, deleted, or stolen, there are multiple copies of the blockchain living on different networks that hold the truth.

Intuitive, Personable Chatbots

Chatbots are already improving by the day. Whereas we used to give a chatbot our email address so a human could contact us, they’re now coded and routinely optimized with answers to common questions and issues.

Chatbots in the healthcare industry can provide a great source of comfort and information to patients and their families. They offer empathy and emotional support to patients. Patient-only chatbots track the patient’s health, connect the patient to clinicians for diagnosis and treatment options, and analyze the patient’s data. Other chatbots help rural patients deal with emergency situations and simpler medical issues with a walk-through-style conversation.

Revolutionizing the Healthcare Game

Healthcare is already a $200 billion industry. But the technologies we’ve discussed will expand the industry’s worth exponentially over the next few years.

In our next post, we’ll cover how computer vision and image recognition, wearables, virtual reality, telemedicine, and voice search are going to impact medicine and the patient experience in the 2020s. So stay tuned!

Have you seen any of these technologies implemented in a cool way at your doctor’s office or at your local hospital? Let us know in the comments below!

Robotic medicine artificial intelligence concept. Robot doctor with stethoscope, syringe blood test. Blue background. empty space for text.

There are many ways humanity is mobilizing to fight against the COVID-19 crisis. While most of us can’t help out at the hospital as a nurse or doctor, we can sew masks, use our 3D printers to make supplementary PPE, and create web and mobile resources to help others cope.

Luckily, we’re also receiving a helping hand from technology. It turns out that robots are doing their fair share of aid: more than two dozen types of robots have been working to support public health and safety by working inside and outside of hospitals, automating testing, and helping humans slowly return to normal life again.

The Newest Essential Workers

If you’ve been to a hospital lately, you might have seen a cylindrical robot wheeling around the ICU area. This automaton allows healthcare workers to take the patient’s temperature, oxygen saturation, and blood pressure remotely. It also helps the patient (especially those on ventilators) maintain their breathing in a sterile and sanitized room.

But this isn’t the only robot concerned with cleanliness. Many medical facilities are also employing large robots equipped with ultraviolet light; they roam the hallways, rotating vertically to disinfect everything they pass by.

Robots are also helping to attend to those who are quarantined. Cart-like automatons are being used to deliver food to people confined to hotel rooms during this crisis. And quadcopter drones are scurrying back and forth, bringing test samples to labs — and also taking photos of anyone violating shelter-in-place restrictions.

These incredibly diverse robots are providing much-needed help. In a global disaster such as this one, we would be remiss to not rely on robots to relieve as many frontline workers as possible. This includes taking care of sanitization, hourly vital measurements, resource delivery, and even a few duties for local police departments.

A Global Effort

Roboticists at the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue and Texas A&M University researched over 120 ways that robots are helping 21 countries during this pandemic. They concluded that aerial and ground robots are indispensable in managing the COVID-19 crisis.

Medic robots holds a tubes with a stick for scraping PCR and blood test. Abstract diagnostic room, medical equipment: table, test tubes blood samples on blue background. copy space

Besides disinfecting hospital rooms and hallways, robots are also delivering food and prescriptions to patients. Some are even handling the extra paperwork and data entry that comes along with a surge in patients.

Outside of many hospitals, sanitizing robots are hard at work spraying disinfectant in public areas. Besides identifying people violating their local stay-at-home orders, drones are being used to create thermal images to find people with fevers and remind people to stay more than six feet apart. One country is even using a robot to roll through crowds, with audio advising people about the virus and social distancing.

For those who must keep working but cannot work from home from a computer all day, robots are helping them keep up business as usual. At a new hospital in China, construction workers worked through the night as drones carried the lighting around the hospital.

Realtors are using robots to teleconference with video during property tours without leaving their homes. Japanese students “attended” graduation with robots walking the stage. And in Cyprus, Greece, a man used his drone to walk his dog so he wouldn’t have to violate the shelter-in-place restrictions.

A Helping Hand, Not a Replacement

Although some of the robots in use are autonomous, that is, developed with AI, there is zero indication that they are taking over human jobs. Instead of displacing workers, robots are aiding them in a myriad of ways.

Robots work faster than most humans, saving time and effort that can be used more productively elsewhere. Aside from efficiency, the usage of robots also helps save vital personal protective equipment (PPE).

All around the world, robots are undertaking tasks that humans could not do safely during this time. This also prevents workers from being exposed to the virus, which is going to save countless lives.

Off-the-Shelf Instead of Cutting-Edge

It’s important to note that, while many startups and research labs are innovating during this time and developing medical robots, these new robots are highly unlikely to make any sort of impact now. Most medical facilities are choosing to rely on tried-and-tested automatons rather than new prototypes.

Most often, robots used in an emergency, especially those making a major difference, were already in common use before the disaster occurred. One reason is that healthcare workers (and other frontline workers) are way too inundated with smaller details during a disaster to spend any time learning or training on a new machine.

Robots already in use can be repurposed in the event of a disaster: agriculture drones, ones that spray pesticides over many acres of farmland, are being used in India and China to spray disinfectant over large urban areas.

Newer iterations of robots will certainly be useful in future pandemics. Which leads us to our next thought: We mustn’t pause innovation when humanity recovers from this pandemic.

Robots Can Help Us With Future Crises

From Los Angeles to Beijing, COVID-19 has brought the world in a standstill. It’s inspiring to see how robots are being used to help humans handle this pandemic better. We hope that the benefits these automatons have brought spur new innovation in this field. It’s clear that robots hold vast potential to help out in crises like this pandemic.

What developments would you like to see in the field of robotics? Did you hear about any other examples of robots helping out during the COVID-19 crisis? As always, feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

If these numbers astound you, consider that the global Internet of Things (IoT) industry is forecasted by experts to connect over 20 billion devices and sensors by the end of this year; that amounts to 1 to 2 for every person in the world.

Many of these devices will come in the form of wearables. It’s imperative that we think deeply about how we utilize this technology — it could have a monumental impact on our health and environment.

Proliferation of Mobile

As smartphones become more affordable and accessible through the improvement of mobile networks and infrastructure, we’ve also seen rapid growth in wearable technology.

Wearables are devices that are worn on the body, as clothes or as accessories. The smartwatch has been the most successful wearable thus far, but many innovative companies have released smart jewelry, glasses, handbags, clothes, and other apparel.

Experts forecast that wearables will become more popular and ubiquitous in the future, eventually permeating every facet of human life. But this prediction could come with consequences.

Researchers like Andreas Köhler, Ph.D. pointed out almost a decade ago (in 2013) that electronics are made of scarce materials that can cause a shortage of supplies in the future; these electronics are very difficult to recycle and reuse when they die, and the global economy and society have become reliant on these products.

Many scientists, like Köhler, believe that industrial and IoT developers, engineers, and designers need to heed the scarcity of these materials and make alternative choices when possible. Developing electronics with a lifecycle that ends with recycling is also a priority to create a more sustainable market for wearables to flourish in. These changes require a change in supply chain logistics as well as our mindsets.

Overcoming Sustainability Challenges

Combining textiles with electronics creates a massive problem for the environment. Since mobile phones and wearables are short-lived electronic goods (especially compared to laptops/desktops, TVs, and even tablets), their product cycles are shorter. We often get bombarded to buy the newest phone model once every year or once every year and a half.

Creating the ambiance of “fast fashion” for consumers in regards to wearables can lead to wearables getting dumped into the landfill. They would become a mass-consumed and mass-disposal electronic product.

What’s worse is that wearables (and essentially all electronics) further deteriorate our environment, society, and human health by increasing the difficulty of recycling electronic waste, scarce resource consumption, and power consumption.

Without a proper lifecycle that ends with recycling scarce materials, we’re further damaging the environment and human lives in generating demand for difficult-to-obtain materials. Without recycling, just as we’ve seen with plastic waste, our wearables would ultimately end up in our water, air, and soil, increasing the number, frequency, and severity of health problems for humans.

Wearables also perpetuate the idea of an always-online culture, which harms human culture, interaction, and mental health.

Adding to everything above, the aspect of data security and privacy is always lurking in the background for emerging technologies. A data leak or loss of data security has real-life implications for users who are impacted.

Opportunities to Improve Sustainability

Experts straddle the line on wearables; many believe that wearables will disrupt how consumers currently shop for products.

If done right, wearables would have a longer lifespan, which would help consumers reframe their view of mobile electronic products. In fact, if manufacturers were able to source more durable material and improve the user’s awareness and knowledge of cleaning and maintaining their wearable device, wearables could last each consumer much longer.

To truly improve the consumption rate of electronics, software compatibility and multi-platform support must be available at any given time. The product and the product’s company should constantly adapt to users’ changing wants and needs.

Research shows that when a product meets the user’s needs and lifestyle and has a meaning for the user, an emotional attachment is created. With an emotional attachment, products have a much longer lifetime.

Medical developers working on health- and fitness-related wearables should build as much customization into the product as possible to allow for the user to become more in tune with it. At our Los Angeles-based mobile app development studio, we work with our clients to brainstorm as many features and data analysis as we can for the user to benefit from.

As a result, society experiences fewer health problems, an improved process for aging, and decreased healthcare costs. These changes directly improve quality of life and open the door for telehealth and preventative medicine.

The User’s Role

Much of the onus on our mass-consumer culture (especially in regards to electronics) rests on us as the consumers. If we didn’t validate the short electronic lifecycle by buying the latest model when it comes out, we could send the right message to the company.

All told, the consumer’s behavior will determine how sustainable wearable products can be. Even if every single wearable was designed with the least scarce resources, if consumers don’t adapt their behavior to buy electronics less often, we won’t see any improvement for the environment and human health.

At this point in time, wearables could be on the right track if we (as users and consumers) take care of them, use them longer, adopt them more slowly, and dispose of them responsibly.

The IoT market is forecasted to reach $922.62 billion by 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing emerging technologies. Due to this rapid growth, many experts worry that we’re overlooking strong cybersecurity protocols and standards by only paying attention to the myriad benefits and potential of IIoT.

The Far-Reaching Consequences of Poor Security

For many IoT app developers, security is usually an afterthought. Even worse, sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle of development, only to be remembered at the end of the project, when the time and budget has run dry.

There are no real, published, official security standards that developers and industries must operate by. Security frameworks simply aren’t accommodating emerging technology fast enough. And no one has settled on an agreement for a minimum protocol of best practices for cybersecurity in their IoT applications.

This means device manufacturers have to layer some sort of security into their physical products, and this, of course, will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some may even circumvent the hassle by not providing any sort of security or encryption. When an organization utilizes devices with no security software, it’s extremely difficult to add encryption and security afterward. What’s worse is that, once devices leave the manufacturing plant, they aren’t updated with the newest security patches, leaving them extremely vulnerable to malicious attacks.

For many organizations utilizing IoT, this isn’t a big deal until a data breach occurs, a hack prevents operations from running smoothly, or until customers and the bottom line are directly affected. For IIoT, however, these consequences could result in power outages for entire regions, causing chaos and disrupting many public necessities, like hospital communications systems.

When implemented poorly, both IoT and IIoT can have disastrous and unnecessary effects.

The Compounding Effect

Organizations utilizing poorly-secured devices start creating a compounded problem for themselves and their end-users. Devices layered on top of sensors, with physical products and software on top of everything else, all become inundated with subpar security due to a lack of strong security on every level of the IoT or IIoT system.

When a system grows in complexity (i.e. multiple sensor types, multiple product types, multiple warehouses, multiple software systems to accommodate everything), it makes even an in-house IT security team’s job difficult. IIoT systems, as they are, are already dynamic, diverse, and independent, and keeping inventory of every interaction and process is extremely cumbersome, especially as the system keeps evolving.

Monitoring and managing these components without transparency, control, and access over every single element at any given time becomes next to impossible. Often, an organization will layer an entire IIoT system over its outdated infrastructure and equipment, which further muddles the task for an IT department.

Addressing the Foundational Problems

Another looming issue affecting every organization that utilized any form of IoT is the lack of IoT security knowledge and awareness. Due to no published standards or laws to abide by, there isn’t much of a talent pool to hire from.

Besides that, most organizations don’t even really know what they’re looking for when they do understand that they need to work to mitigate the exposure and risk of a hacking attempt. They don’t know what to look for when building their IIoT security infrastructure and strategy, and they certainly don’t know how to maintain it when it’s built.

Experts recommend using a managed security service provider (MSSP) to work through the security foundation and long-term strategy. An MSSP will have the expertise, experience, and continuous knowledge to manage a complex IIoT system. Since IIoT devices have different deployment conditions, networking needs, and application requirements than a regular IoT system, a dedicated team will spend budget in the most efficient way.

Most MSSPs have also developed best practices from experience and networking internationally with other MSSPs, giving you the best bang for your buck in both preventative maintenance and on-demand needs.

But it’s not enough to simply hire an MSSP. The organization must carefully vet the experts that the MSSP brings on board, taking into account their services, expertise, resources, and guarantees. An MSSP that requires continuing education for their employees, offers cutting-edge security knowledge, includes data correlation and dashboards to track security threats in real-time, and also returns a customized solution for your enterprise is the best partner to pair up with.

IoT Security Is a Team Effort

Of course, the organization’s leadership must understand the importance of keeping security procedures and policies up-to-date, using assessments and audits regularly to revisit what needs improvement and optimization. Whether or not it’s a new implementation of an IIoT system, cybersecurity should be at the core and foundation of all IIoT systems.

It’s important that your IoT systems developer also takes security seriously. An MSSP might be seen as a band-aid or be a part of an organization’s post-implementation plan, but as we’ve discussed, security standards start at the root of the IoT system. At our studio’s Los Angeles headquarters, our IoT developers are trained to prioritize cybersecurity as a top need for all implementations. Your organization should settle for nothing less.