By Graeme Parton / Special to Healthcare Facilities Today

It’s no secret that the UK’s healthcare system is under immense pressure. With the population rising and budgets being cut at almost every opportunity, staff and facilities are currently stretched further than they’ve ever been before. 

Amid all of this, the professionals and teams behind the scenes are rightly expected by patients and authorities to deliver the same, high levels of care. With problems starting to mount, the search is on for solutions, and it’s fair to say the biggest hope and potential lie in connected technologies. 

The Internet of Things has already changed the world in countless ways, and the best really is yet to come for the healthcare sector and its workers.

A golden opportunity to improve

Medical professions, specifically nurses and doctors, regularly feature in ‘most stressful jobs’ lists. People enter the field with great motives – to help others – but find themselves having to work increasingly long days to meet the ever-diversifying needs of their patients. It’s a strain that needs to be eased.

The opportunity exists to do more than just maintain standards, though. We have a chance to increase productivity and efficiency in ways that will improve patient care across the board. It may sound like a bold claim, but the IoT is primed to help reduce recovery times and build on overall patient welfare. It’s the answer most have been waiting for. Let’s look at why.

Automation = more time

For a healthcare professional, every day is made up of hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of little processes. Administering medicine, making patient checks, updating records. All of these are essential but they can get in the way of important personal actions that make all the difference: providing bedside assistance, helping to make patients more comfortable during longer stays, updating friends and relatives – the list goes on.

The installation of sensors and connected technologies within healthcare equipment will allow many of the more menial and repetitive tasks to be automated. Basic temperature and humidity sensors can help keep ward conditions comfortable, for example, while data sent from medicine dispensers and vital monitoring equipment can be used to automatically update a patient’s digital record.

The staff who would traditionally complete these tasks now have the extra hour (or more) in their day that they’ve been longing for; time to spend doing the things that can’t be handled by computer, and perhaps even to finish their shifts on time.

Time to go home

It’s inevitable that the IoT will impact all patients to some extent, but it could allow some to continue being cared for in the most comfortable place possible: home.

As the relevant technologies develop, doctors will be in a position to take a step back from their patients, safe in the knowledge that they – and their surroundings – will remain connected at all times. Sensors will provide the appropriate data, and in many cases trigger the appropriate actions, around the clock. If a connected watch picks up on a slight increase in heart rate, it can send alerts to an on-call doctor nearby. If movement sensors can identify a patient having difficulties getting around, help can be sent immediately. Taking it a step further, if a sensor can determine that a patient’s body temperature is below or above a certain level, it can communicate with the air conditioning system to make the necessary adjustments.

The result of this, once again, is less of a strain on the medical professional’s time. They can apply their expertise to other, more critical tasks. It’s an idea that many patients agree with too – 72 per cent of adults believe the use of health-monitoring technologies in the home would take pressure off the NHS as well as themselves. The same proportion said they’d take greater peace of mind from having IoT technology in their relatives’ homes. Everybody wins.

A big, big data opportunity

The opportunities don’t stop there. The IoT promises to generate a gargantuan volume of data – on everything from how staff move around a hospital to the times at which patients are most likely to take comfort breaks. Harnessed properly, this information will help healthcare managers optimise processes to ensure the least stress and work for caregivers and the best care for patients.

Looking ahead, it’s difficult not to be excited about the connected future of healthcare. The promise of the IoT is huge, so the pressure’s on, but it’s already having a significant impact – the dependence placed on it by the sector will only increase from here on in. The results, as we’ve discussed above, benefit everybody involved – from the professionals whose jobs become easier, to the patients who inevitably receive better care.

Graeme Parton is is a brand journalist working on behalf of Arqiva.