What Is the Internet of Medical Things? Supporting Smart Hospital Development
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a significant technological innovation in the healthcare field today, combining IoT technology with healthcare to provide smarter and more convenient solutions for people’s health. The emergence of IoMT has not only improved the quality and efficiency of healthcare services but also brought a brand new experience to health management.
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What Is the Internet of Medical Things?The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) extends communication networks into healthcare scenarios, using sensing and communication technologies to connect various sensors, actuators, infrastructure, medical devices, and smart equipment with hospital information systems. This supports data collection, transmission, processing, storage, and analysis applications in medical services and hospital operations, achieving a network that enables communication between people and things, as well as between things.In smart hospitals, IoMT enables interconnectivity of medical production factors such as people, machines, and things at any time and place, facilitating the collection, transmission, and processing of medical data to meet the development of intelligent medical applications. Guided by the “Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Public Hospitals” and the “Performance Evaluation Operation Manual for National Level Three Public Hospitals (2023 Edition)”, IoMT technology has been widely applied to address the normalization of the pandemic, homogenized medical services, and refined hospital operations.However, during the construction of IoMT networks, the biggest challenges remain fragmentation, high security risks, high construction costs, and a lack of comprehensive and scientific planning. Therefore, the absence of top-level planning and design for this crucial infrastructure of smart hospitals has led to many isolated, siloed systems and fragmented networks, making it difficult to support the ongoing evolution and development of smart hospitals. Like the challenges faced by IoT in all industries, the shift from the Internet to IoT has expanded the connected objects from PCs and mobile phones to various medical devices and sensors, making existing internet communication technologies inadequate.How to solve these challenges and build a future-oriented IoMT that continuously iterates and evolves, establishing a system that meets real-time application needs for daily medical operations, achieving a real-time, reliable, stable, secure, manageable, and operable IoMT system is a crucial foundation for the development of smart hospitals.Recently, the National Engineering Research Center for Medical Big Data Application Technology, the Key Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence Medical Devices Research and Evaluation of the National Medical Products Administration, and the Hospital IoMT Branch of the China Medical Equipment Association jointly released the “China Hospital Medical IoT Perception Network Technology White Paper 2.0” in collaboration with Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. This white paper responds to the aforementioned problems and challenges. In its formulation, it combines the requirements of the “Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the High-Quality Development of Public Hospitals” and the “Performance Evaluation Operation Manual for National Level Three Public Hospitals (2023 Edition)” with the development of new technologies, analyzes the driving forces for IoT construction and the challenges currently faced, and proposes construction concepts and value propositions with smart hospitals as the goal, while comprehensively explaining construction plans and key technologies, and analyzing the benefits brought by typical application scenarios.
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Key Technologies of IoMTThe key breakpoint in the construction of IoMT lies between the massive IoT perception terminals and communication networks. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology mentioned in the “Three-Year Action Plan for New Infrastructure Construction of IoT (2021-2023)” that IoT primarily utilizes sensing technology and network communication technology, while also clarifying the need for innovative breakthroughs around short-range communication technology, IPv6, and sensing technology. The following introduces the key technological breakthroughs in the perception network of IoMT.Technology One: Wi-Fi Multi-Frequency Wireless Integrated AccessIn the smart hospital scenario, there are numerous medical devices that use various communication and connection methods: for example, vital sign devices (such as monitors, ventilators, etc.) interface with RS232, RJ45, etc.; wearable medical devices (dynamic ECG monitors, wristbands) use Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.; auxiliary medical sensors (infusion monitoring, asset management tags, etc.) use Bluetooth, RFID, etc.Various sensor manufacturers provide their own access gateways for wired or wireless access, leading to complex hospital networks and complicated usage for medical staff. For the construction of smart hospitals and the evolution of future communication technologies, it is recommended to adopt advanced Wi-Fi 6/Wi-Fi 7 wireless technology to integrate multiple device protocols and achieve unified planning and construction of a single network; enabling IoT access across all scenarios.For most existing medical devices that lack networking capabilities, but often have RS232 debugging serial ports, it is possible to convert RS232 to Wi-Fi 6/Wi-Fi 7 using Wi-Fi 6/Wi-Fi 7 CPE, allowing wired devices to be “unplugged” for convenient mobile sharing of medical devices; additionally, new medical devices are currently evolving towards Wi-Fi networking capabilities.For the increasing number of wearable devices and medical auxiliary service sensors, a unified wireless access gateway can be used to achieve one-stop access for medical devices, mobile monitoring, material management, and nursing assistance across all scenarios. At the same time, the unified wireless access gateway has the capability to collaborate across multiple frequency bands, supporting interference avoidance in the air to ensure reliable communication for every sensor.Technology Two: Distributed Wi-Fi Zero Roaming TechnologyDistributed Wi-Fi utilizes technology that networks base stations (DAP) with distributed optical radio frequency units (ORU) and distributed antenna units to achieve zero roaming, high bandwidth, and super-converged hospital wireless networks. It enables “one AP, one network, one IP runs throughout the hospital,” achieving functionalities such as seamless login to business systems, stable networking for terminals, and physical isolation. In addition to these two technologies, the construction of the IoMT perception network also requires millimeter-wave perception technology, seamless access technology for medical devices, secure access and data traceability technology, dual transmission and intelligent access technology, SRv6 intelligent backbone network technology, edge intelligent medical data collection gateways, end-to-end secure communication technology, and visible and intelligent operation and maintenance technology for the entire network.
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Application Scenarios of IoMTScenario One: Smart Pre-Hospital Emergency “5G + Medical IoT Perception Network” Model is Particularly Significant for Smart Emergency Management.Scenario Two: Smart Outpatient ServicesPre-diagnosis Services: Through the hospital’s smart brain, achieve unified allocation and optimization of medical resources, combined with internet technology to realize resource appointment through various channels such as Alipay, WeChat, APP, telephone, and multifunctional self-service machines.In-diagnosis Services: By integrating IoT and internet technologies, ensure safety, orderliness, and convenience of medical services; deploy gate machines at the entrances and exits of outpatient halls to recognize patients’ health code information, collect patients’ body temperature, and obtain the status of patients’ appointment departments, thus conducting safety checks and fever screenings, guiding patients to the corresponding appointment department locations, ensuring safety for both medical staff and patients, and reducing cross-infection.Post-diagnosis Services: Establish a unified customer service center that combines the hospital’s smart brain with internet technology to facilitate interaction between doctors and patients, satisfaction surveys, follow-up management, health monitoring, medication delivery, prescription transfers, and online nursing services, meeting various post-diagnosis needs of patients, especially for home wearable device applications, achieving a closed-loop management of residents’ health, providing residents with higher-quality medical and health services, and further enhancing the bond between patients and hospitals.Scenario Three: Smart WardsSmart wards are the intelligent transformation of ordinary wards, continuously monitoring patients’ vital signs in real-time through wearable vests, wristbands, and other devices, and using intelligent analysis to predict significant risks in advance, winning precious time for timely rescue; smart wards also include applications such as patient fall detection and positioning, infusion monitoring and abnormal alarm, medical waste management, and hand hygiene management.Scenario Four: Smart Equipment ManagementThe IoMT enables the structured and standardized acquisition of operational log data, equipment operation records, and scanning parameter data from large imaging devices, which can be used for cost-benefit analysis, refined management, preventive maintenance, clinical application evaluation, and intelligent diagnosis. Using historical data for big data mining analysis, a preventive maintenance mechanism and key component failure warning model can be established, effectively reducing medical equipment failures and maintenance costs, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of yuan annually.
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ConclusionIoT technology has injected new vitality into smart healthcare. Through real-time monitoring, telemedicine, interconnectivity of medical devices, big data analysis, and innovative applications of smart medical devices, the healthcare field is ushering in new development opportunities. With continuous technological advancements, we have reason to expect that IoT will bring more innovations to smart healthcare, driving medical services towards a more intelligent, efficient, and human-centered direction.Editor: Wang ZhizhongReviewed by: Zhang JingjingSource: YixinbangTaiyuan Digital Health Guarantee Center
