In this article, OLIVIER PAUZET from Sierra Wireless talks about how cellular machine-to-machine (M2M) communications have opened the door to a world of new, beneficial healthcare applications, previously thought to be unfeasible
The ability to design, manufacture and distribute devices that can monitor and collect information in real time around the clock has led to innovative and useful applications that can improve people’s health and wellbeing, and that’s a trend that is sure to continue well into the future.
For example, connected health devices are now being used in a variety of applications, such as:
- Home health monitoring for patients with chronic conditions
- Connecting mobile caregivers and medical equipment to back-end institutional systems and patient records
- Improving fitness and athletic training
- Assisting people with disabilities
Cellular communications in healthcare
To detect problems early, to make prudent and informed decisions, and to empower people to improve their own health and wellbeing, doctors need up-to-date, accurate health information about their patients
Modern medical science can do amazing things to improve people’s health and wellbeing, but it is usually only as good as the information doctors have access to. To detect problems early, to make prudent and informed decisions, and to empower people to improve their own health and wellbeing, doctors need up-to-date, accurate health information about their patients.
M2M technologies can help provide this information more quickly than before, when updates to a patient’s status could only be made during office visits. Because of this, connected health applications can contribute very effectively to enhancing preventative care, improving compliance with prescribed treatments, and ultimately realising better, more-successful health results for individuals. Consider some of the possibilities:
- Medical monitoring: To provide the best medical outcomes for many patients with chronic health conditions, caregivers need to closely monitor vital signs and other patient information. New solutions can capture and transmit a patient’s heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and other vital signs remotely – allowing patients to remain under constant care, even when they’re at home. Connected health monitoring devices can also play a role in the management of chronic conditions such as diabetes or sleep apnea. In the past, doctors were reliant on patients to manually track and record their day-to-day, or even hour-to-hour, health information, which was not only time consuming, but prone to error. Connected medical devices can now automatically and accurately track information about glucose levels, sleep patterns, medical implant status, and other information, and transmit that data instantly to the patient’s doctor.
- Sports and fitness: Cellular solutions are being used to connect sports monitoring devices that provide real-time results to analyse and enhance athlete training. Even for everyday fitness, cellular devices embedded in wristbands or clothing can power applications that capture location, heart rate, distance, elevation, and other metrics to help runners and bikers track and optimise their workouts. Competitive athletes, both professional and amateur, will also be able to benchmark and compare their performance to their peers’ anywhere in the world, and in real time.
- Assisting people with disabilities: One of the most exciting possibilities of cellular-connected health devices is just now beginning to be explored: providing personalised, real-time services to help people with disabilities. An example would be an application that could track people with cognitive difficulties like dementia or Asperger’s Syndrome, and provide reminders to help them manage their daily routines. With connected applications providing alerts to personal accidents or abnormal vital signs, medication reminders, as well as other services, people suffering from a variety of disorders could accomplish more on their own, vastly improving the quality of their life.
In all of these cases, cellular connectivity addresses a variety of difficult healthcare challenges and enables a number of important benefits. With M2M connectivity, organisations can:
- Create innovative mobile health applications to efficiently collect, aggregate, and share real-time health information
- Give doctors the ability to more accurately track and monitor their patients
- Extend caregivers and medical services and equipment to more places than previously possible
- Make it easier for patients to comply with medication instructions, therapies, and self-reporting with in-home connected medical devices
- Empower individuals to more effectively track and take charge of their own health
- Take advantage of remote monitoring solutions that lower overall operating costs by decreasing patient readmissions and visits, a key factor in streamlining healthcare costs for insurance providers, government-funded healthcare programmes and the population as a whole
- Maintain and protect patient records securely and comply with healthcare regulatory and privacy requirements
- Provide the highly reliable, ‘always-on’ communication that connected health applications demand
- Lower the barriers to entry for innovative ideas and solutions that can improve people’s lives and wellbeing
Leveraging an M2M platform
Clearly, cellular connectivity provides a number of valuable benefits for many kinds of health applications and organisations. But how do healthcare institutions and companies design solutions take advantage of it?
In concept, the architecture of a cellular M2M infrastructure is simple. It starts with connecting a remote device – be it a glucose monitor, a mobile MRI system, an onboard diagnostics device on an ambulance, etc – to a cellular-connected modem or module. That cellular gateway interfaces with the connected asset and communicates with the back-end application infrastructure, allowing the organisation to monitor and control all of its assets and collect data from them anywhere they may be operating, securely and remotely, in real time.
Modern M2M platforms include standardised application development tools that make it easy and inexpensive to connect and interface with remote assets, and they also incorporate comprehensive management portals that make connecting devices over cellular networks, in effect, a virtual ‘plug-and-play’ solution
While the concept behind an M2M solution is straightforward, a great deal of complexity exists beneath the surface. An M2M infrastructure must include a redundant, fault-tolerant wireless messaging system, deployed with connection to the mobile network operator (MNO). It requires redundant back-office hardware, including database servers, disk arrays, load balancers, etc.
Designing a connected health application is an extremely complex task. Building these types of applications requires extensive software development, including application development tools, user interface development tools, embedded development tools, etc, and can take thousands of hours of custom integration and development. When you add wireless communications into a device, you also need to consider many applications that can be overlooked, yet are nonetheless vital to a remote communications and control infrastructure, such as:
- Mechanisms to subscribe wireless devices to the network
- Mechanisms to control and update wireless devices
- Systems to collect information from the wireless devices and other systems to acquire and visualise that data
- Systems to manage and control the assets being monitored
Other key considerations that are sometimes overlooked in the initial planning stages of integrating wireless technology into a healthcare device relate to the many different approvals required by different carriers from country to country. The process is further complicated by the many different cellular technologies in play, including varied frequency allocation across state borders.
Fortunately, organisations developing connected health applications in the current marketplace no longer have to start from scratch or go it alone
Fortunately, organisations developing connected health applications in the current marketplace no longer have to start from scratch or go it alone. Today, they can take advantage of mature, comprehensive M2M platforms, software libraries, wireless modules and development tools to accelerate the integration of the wireless communications system into their equipment and back-end systems. Modern M2M platforms include standardised application development tools that make it easy and inexpensive to connect and interface with remote assets, and they also incorporate comprehensive management portals that make connecting devices over cellular networks, in effect, a virtual ‘plug-and-play’ solution.
With MNOs worldwide now aggressively targeting M2M customers, organisations can also now take advantage of end-to-end cellular service offerings and special airtime rates for connected assets. To realise the most benefit from a cellular M2M implementation, however, organisations should make sure they are using a strong and well-designed M2M platform that provides all of the essential capabilities their cellular deployments will require.
Healthcare M2M moving forward
To realise the most benefit from a cellular M2M implementation, organisations should make sure they are using a strong and well-designed M2M platform that provides all of the essential capabilities their cellular deployments will require
Today’s healthcare organisations are just beginning to explore connected health applications, and the possibilities in this market seem unlimited. In the coming years, innovative mobile applications will take advantage of anywhere, anytime cellular connectivity to keep patients better connected to their doctors, to empower individuals to improve their health, and to capitalise on real-time health information in ways we can only begin to imagine.
Many of the barriers that previously prevented healthcare solution developers from taking advantage of mobile connectivity no longer apply. With today’s mature, comprehensive M2M application development and management platforms, organisations no longer need to develop and integrate every aspect of a connected health solution from scratch. Instead, they can rapidly transform their good ideas into real-world solutions that improve people’s lives – and that’s something that just makes good sense for us all.
