Название: Closing the Care Gap with Wearable Devices: Innovating Healthcare with Wearable Patient Monitoring
Автор: Michael W. Davis, Michael J. Kirwan
Издательство: Routledge
Год: 2023
Страниц: 205
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 10.2 MB

The ability to capture real-time patient data, no matter the location, via remote patient monitoring, and to transmit that data to providers and organizations approved by the consumer/patient, will become a critical capability for all healthcare providers. Of all the remote patient monitoring product designs, wearable medical devices are emerging as the best positioned to support the evolving patient-focused healthcare environment.

This book is for those who are evaluating, selecting, implementing, managing, or designing wearable devices to monitor the health of patients and consumers. This book will provide the knowledge to understand the issues that mitigate the risk of wearable technologies so people can deliver successful projects using these technologies. It will discuss their use in remote patient monitoring, the advantages and disadvantages of different types of physiological sensors, different wireless communication protocols, and different power sources. It will describe issues and solutions in cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance, as well as setting them up to be used in healthcare systems and by patients.

Nearly all wearable devices communicate the sensor data through a wireless connection. There are some devices that use a connector to download data, but that means the data is not available immediately. Wireless communication can send the data in real time. There are many choices for wireless communication. The most used is Bluetooth Low Energy, or BLE. It uses the lowest power, and it can communicate directly to most smartphones. It must be within a few feet of the phone, however, so it will not work unless you take your phone wherever you go.

WiFi is convenient because it is available on all smartphones as well as hot spots in many places, but it consumes a lot of power, which requires a large battery. Cellular service can connect directly to the Internet rather than pass through a phone. This is a big advantage when a phone is not always being carried. Cellular uses a very large amount of power, however. Battery life is a major limitation of wearable devices. To make the device small, the battery must be small; this means it does not last long between charges. A lot of design choices are made to minimize the power consumption. One of the biggest consumers of power is wireless communication.

Cybersecurity is a growing problem. Devices are being hacked more and more. When this happens, the data may be intercepted or corrupted. In addition, devices such as laptops, cell phones, and wearable devices can become portals into the networks of homes, businesses, and healthcare facilities. Most consumer products have little cybersecurity. It costs money to make devices more secure, and consumers do not make purchasing decisions based on the security of a device. This may change as security hacks grow in severity and frequency.

Wearable devices are more at risk of cyberattacks than devices that don’t move. Not only can the data be intercepted, but a healthcare facility may not know that data is coming from a different device, or that the device may be worn by the wrong person. They also have all the issues that affect other devices. The data can be intercepted on the Internet if it’s not encrypted. The device may be an easy way to get access to the internal network in order to attack it. The device may be spoofed by another device, so it can gain access to the data or internal network. A hacker may change settings
on the device, so it behaves incorrectly. The data may not be accurate. The timestamp on the data may be incorrect.