Leveraging IoT tools in clinics for enhanced patient care and safety

The quickly rising impact of IoT in healthcare isn’t a surprise — not if you consider the worldwide need for medical attention, the devotion of practitioners to their care, and the vast potential to use emerging technologies for so many powerful uses.

Medical providers require reliable Internet for healthcare facilities, regardless of whether those are fixed locations or temporary pop-up centers. Doctors and nurses in these places use devices and applications to monitor patient data, and sensors deliver insights into environmental conditions that affect care and safety practices.

It’s an intricate ecosystem of technology, and it needs a simple system of underlying connectivity — an efficient combination of LTE, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connectivity.

Wide range of IoT in healthcare

Connected medical devices such as heart rate monitors, pulse oximeters, and glucose monitors allow healthcare professionals to track analytics so they can assess a patient’s condition and quickly determine the proper next steps. Often these devices are connected via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

Environmental monitoring is another multi-faceted need in clinics and hospitals. IoT in healthcare includes sensors that monitor the temperature of medicines and occupancy for social distancing, and that detect water leaks or other liquids. To help prevent emergencies, alerts can be set up to notify IT or operations staff when environmental data falls out of a normal range. These alerts can determine if any steps can be taken to remedy the situation.

How to easily connect healthcare devices with wireless solutions

In both pop-up and fixed clinic environments, LTE networks are an essential tool for connecting IoT medical devices and sensors to applications and data storage services from the cloud or main campuses. However, securely deploying IoT in healthcare facilities can take a long time and sometimes is difficult to manage. The key is a networking solution that simplifies the process and brings lots of functionality into one platform.

Cradlepoint’s wireless broadband capabilities have benefitted numerous healthcare delivery organizations by providing connectivity anywhere. With Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service and E300 or E3000 routers, a network can be established without an on-site IT team. Using NetCloud, the network can be configured in advance and shipped with proper SIM devices so the local staff only needs to power it up.

When the MC20BT Bluetooth adapter is added to the expansion slot of the E300 and E3000 devices, a dedicated Bluetooth network is unnecessary — simplifying the network architecture. Plus, NetCloud Service offers connectors that transport data to MQTT, as well as IoT SaaS, for a complete solution.

The result is a flexible, reliable network for simplified edge-to-cloud connectivity — enabling healthcare IoT and other sensors to fulfill their roles in the most efficient manner possible.