How 5G wireless (and concomitant technologies) will revolutionize healthcare?

The need to have equitable access to quality healthcare is enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which defines the developmental agenda of the UN for the next 15 years. In particular, the third SDG focuses on the need to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. In this paper, we build the case that 5G wireless technology, along with concomitant emerging technologies (such as IoT, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning), will transform global healthcare systems in the near future. Our optimism around 5G-enabled healthcare stems from a confluence of significant technical pushes that are already at play: apart from the availability of high-throughput low-latency wireless connectivity, other significant factors include the democratization of computing through cloud computing; the democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing (e.g., IBM Watson); and the commoditization of data through crowdsourcing and digital exhaust. These technologies together can finally crack a dysfunctional healthcare system that has largely been impervious to technological innovations. We highlight the persistent deficiencies of the current healthcare system and then demonstrate how the 5G-enabled healthcare revolution can fix these deficiencies. We also highlight open technical research challenges, and potential pitfalls, that may hinder the development of such a 5G-enabled health revolution

From Wearable Sensors to Smart Implants – Towards Pervasive and Personalised Healthcare

<p>Objective: This article discusses the evolution of pervasive healthcare from its inception for activity recognition using wearable sensors to the future of sensing implant deployment and data processing. Methods: We provide an overview of some of the past milestones and recent developments, categorised into different generations of pervasive sensing applications for health monitoring. This is followed by a review on recent technological advances that have allowed unobtrusive continuous sensing combined with diverse technologies to reshape the clinical workflow for both acute and chronic disease management. We discuss the opportunities of pervasive health monitoring through data linkages with other health informatics systems including the mining of health records, clinical trial databases, multi-omics data integration and social media. Conclusion: Technical advances have supported the evolution of the pervasive health paradigm towards preventative, predictive, personalised and participatory medicine. Significance: The sensing technologies discussed in this paper and their future evolution will play a key role in realising the goal of sustainable healthcare systems.</p> <p> </p

Wearable Devices in Health Monitoring from the Environmental towards Multiple Domains: A Survey

The World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes the environmental, behavioral, physiological, and psychological domains that impact adversely human health, well-being, and quality of life (QoL) in general. The environmental domain has significant interaction with the others. With respect to proactive and personalized medicine and the Internet of medical things (IoMT), wearables are most important for continuous health monitoring. In this work, we analyze wearables in healthcare from a perspective of innovation by categorizing them according to the four domains. Furthermore, we consider the mode of wearability, costs, and prolonged monitoring. We identify features and investigate the wearable devices in the terms of sampling rate, resolution, data usage (propagation), and data transmission. We also investigate applications of wearable devices. Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Library delivered wearables that we require to monitor at least one environmental parameter, e.g., a pollutant. According to the number of domains, from which the wearables record data, we identify groups: G1, environmental parameters only; G2, environmental and behavioral parameters; G3, environmental, behavioral, and physiological parameters; and G4 parameters from all domains. In total, we included 53 devices of which 35, 9, 9, and 0 belong to G1, G2, G3, and G4, respectively. Furthermore, 32, 11, 7, and 5 wearables are applied in general health and well-being monitoring, specific diagnostics, disease management, and non-medical. We further propose customized and quantified output for future wearables from both, the perspectives of users, as well as physicians. Our study shows a shift of wearable devices towards disease management and particular applications. It also indicates the significant role of wearables in proactive healthcare, having capability of creating big data and linking to external healthcare systems for real-time monitoring and care delivery at the point of perception

Design of a Customized multipurpose nano-enabled implantable system for in-vivo theranostics

The first part of this paper reviews the current development and key issues on implantable multi-sensor devices for in vivo theranostics. Afterwards, the authors propose an innovative biomedical multisensory system for in vivo biomarker monitoring that could be suitable for customized theranostics applications. At this point, findings suggest that cross-cutting Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) could improve the overall performance of the system given that the convergence of technologies in nanotechnology, biotechnology, micro&nanoelectronics and advanced materials permit the development of new medical devices of small dimensions, using biocompatible materials, and embedding reliable and targeted biosensors, high speed data communication, and even energy autonomy. Therefore, this article deals with new research and market challenges of implantable sensor devices, from the point of view of the pervasive system, and time-to-market. The remote clinical monitoring approach introduced in this paper could be based on an array of biosensors to extract information from the patient. A key contribution of the authors is that the general architecture introduced in this paper would require minor modifications for the final customized bio-implantable medical device

A Bibliometric Survey of Smart Wearable in the Health Insurance Industry

Smart wearables help real-time and remote monitoring of health data for effective diagnostic and preventive health care services. Wearable devices have the ability to track and monitor healthcare vitals such as heart rate, physical activities, BMI (Body Mass Index), blood pressure, and keeps an individual notified about the health status. Artificial Intelligence-enabled wearables show an ability to transform the health insurance sector. This would not only enable self-management of individual health but also help them focus from treatments to the preventions of health hazards. With this customer-centric approach to health care, it will enable the insurance companies to track the health behaviour of the individuals. This can perhaps lead to better incentivization models with a lower premium to the health-centric customers. Health insurance companies can have better outreach with these customer-centric products. The area is exceptionally novel and shows potential for the research opportunities. Although the literature shows the presence of few works incepting the application of smart wearables in health insurance, it was found that the works are across sections of the society and extremely limited to regions and boundaries. Thus, a need for Bibliometric survey in the area of Smart Wearables in Health insurance is necessary to track the research trends, progress and scope of the future research. This paper conducts Bibliometric study for “Smart Wearables in Health Insurance Industry” by extracting documents of total 287 from Scopus database using keywords like wearables, health insurance, health care, machine learning and health risk prediction. The study is conducted since the last decade that is 2011-2020 for the research analysis. From the study, it is observed that application of wearables in health insurance are in a nascent stage and there is a scope for researchers, insurance, health care stakeholders to explore the used cases for a better user experience

AN EVALUATION OF SMART IMPLANTS IN ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY THAT ENHANCE PATIENT OUTCOMES

Implantable devices with both therapeutic and diagnostic functions are called smart implants. The health care system might save a great deal of money if smart implants are included into routine clinical practice. Applications for smart orthopaedic implants have been found for fracture fixation, spine fusion, hip and knee replacements, among other procedures. Thus far, pressure, force, strain, displacement, proximity, and temperature have all been measured from inside the body using smart orthopaedic implants. Through the integration of application-specific technologies with the implant, physical sensations can be measured. Improvements in implant design, surgical technique, and postoperative care and rehabilitation techniques have been made possible by data from smart implants. With very few exceptions, despite decades of research, smart implants are still not routinely used in clinical practice. This is mostly because integrating the most recent sensor technology requires the implants to be significantly modified. Even if the underlying technology for smart implants has advanced over the past few decades, major technological obstacles still need to be solved before smart implants are used in the majority of medical procedures. Future smart implants' sensors will be compact, straightforward, strong, and affordable, requiring little to no change to the way current implant designs are made. With technology developing so quickly, smart implants will soon be widely used. The secret to integrating smart implants into routine clinical practice is new sensor technology that reduces the need to modify current implants

Somatic surveillance: corporeal control through information networks

Somatic surveillance is the increasingly invasive technological monitoring of and intervention into body functions. Within this type of surveillance regime, bodies are recast as nodes on vast information networks, enabling corporeal control through remote network commands, automated responses, or self-management practices. In this paper, we investigate three developments in somatic surveillance: nanotechnology systems for soldiers on the battlefield, commercial body-monitoring systems for health purposes, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) implants for identification of hospital patients. The argument is that in present and projected forms, somatic surveillance systems abstract bodies and physiological systems from social contexts, facilitating hyper-individualized control and the commodification of life functions