Edge AI in Healthcare - Why does it matter?

Although the hype of Edge AI in healthcare started a long back, pandemic drifted the curve at a faster pace.

“The global market for Internet of Things medical devices is expected to exceed $543.3 billion by 2025”

Grandviewresearch

Infrastructure is the backbone of any healthcare institution. The outbreak of Covid-19 compelled all the countries to check out and upgrade the status quo of the healthcare facilities without any ado.

Hospitals or any healthcare facilities center wanted their patients to avail of a seamless healthcare experience in spite of all the hindrances.

As the demand for contactless treatments and social distancing increases, the need for IoT and AI in healthcare is further lifted.

Any technology or innovation comes with its own setbacks, especially during its initial stages. When there is an elevation in the volume of IoT devices, shouldn't we feel happy and secure as it can enhance the healthcare quality?

No. The fact is, it complicated the life of hospital facilities management teams as even a single miscommunication in the data can cost invaluable lives of people.

Edge Intelligence in healthcare can change this scenario once and for all.

Let's explore how Smarthub's AI powered Edge Intelligence platform can effectively uplift the patient’s healthcare experience and save the facilities team from attacks.

Edge AI in Real-Time Patient Data Monitoring

Lockdown - desperate weapon taken by the authorities across the world. In order to save ourselves from the deadly virus and to contain the spread, we all locked ourselves within our homes.

Although the situation befriended and improved the comfort level of certain groups of the population, the majority have been effected without any second thoughts. Utilising the healthcare facilities which is a basic human need has become a nightmare.

IoT devices come into the rescue process. It enables the patients to get their consultations online at their homes.

Example: A patient can simply wear the IoT wearable that can sense the temperature, pressure, humidity provided by their doctors. Are these parameters are recorded and stored in the hospital private cloud or on-premise servers. Whenever there is a surge in the normal level, the doctors are alerted with real-time notifications.

This way, the patients, doctors, and the hospital staff are safe and the experience is smooth.

Challenges

Like in the above example there will be multiple data transfers from diverse sensors from different patients of different locations at different timings.

Each sensor is bought from a different OEM/hardware manufacturer. The software that comes with the IoT devices does not remain the same for all.

The software/app from the thermal sensor manufacturer may be way different from the heartbeat monitoring IoT devices. Further, each interprets their data differently.

This makes the facilities team open and closes innumerable apps to continuously monitor the health of the IoT devices engaged in real-time patient monitoring.

Suggested reading: 8 ways hospitals can benefit from Intelligent Infrastructure

How can Smarthub.ai overcome this?

Smarthub.AI lends a helping hand to the facilities teams to stay away from this havoc.

Rather than switching between each software tool/app, you can simply open our platform to get the status of all these edge devices in one place.

We enable the unified data view of all the apps and software tools in a single platform. This can save the CISO, CIO of the healthcare institution from spending huge efforts and time on maintenance.

Edge intelligence in healthcare when powered by Artificial Intelligence, leverages all the recordings from the IoT devices that are stored in the hospital on-premise servers or its private cloud.

All the recorded data patterns are analyzed carefully.

For example, if 100 ECG patches purchased from an X manufacturer are found faulty for a long time, it is sent as a notification to the Facilities Manager. Now he can inform the procurement team to stop the purchasing from them.

Edge AI in ensuring patient data privacy

“The number of remotely monitored patients will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.9% and reach 50.2 million by 2021”

-Berg Insight

This is a welcoming sign. IoT sensors are now available as wearable or ingested into the patient’s body to monitor their health conditions remotely.

It tracks and transfers highly sensible data to the respected healthcare stakeholders. When patients are dealing with chronic failures or diabetes, dialysis, etc. each minuscule data matters in order to save their lives.

The countries across the world in order to keep this under control, have their own data privacy regulating bodies. To say a few, HIPAA in the US, GDPR in the EU. Healthcare institutions have to abide by this to ensure the data security of the patients.

Example: A patient with a renal failure consulting at a Y hospital in the XYZ branch will have all his history recorded in the hospital’s EHR - Electronic Health Records. If the patient travels to a new location and wishes to continue his treatment from the ZYX branch of the same Y hospital. He can do so by using his patient id.

All his health records are easily exchanged between these branches of the same healthcare institution. Standards like HL7 are boon to us in facilitating this.

Challenges

If the patient’s data are easily available for transfer between two entities, the chances for the data to be hacked are high.

There are a lot of stakeholders involved in between and the information has to traverse across the different edge devices, servers, or cloud sometimes.

What if any edge device is vulnerable to a cybersecurity hack?

“Ransomware attacks in healthcare doubled in Q3 2020 in the US”

-Checkpoint

Sonoma Valley hospital, Ascend Clinical were a few who succumbed to the dreadful breach last year. They end up compromising the data of more than 77,000 individuals.

Suggested reading: Healthcare data breaches to triple

How can Smarthub.ai overcome this?

Our Intelligent Edge Platform takes care of the edge devices’ life cycle management efficiently.

Its device discovery feature gets the status of all the edge devices that are deployed in the hospitals and with the patients.

It continuously monitors its health and if there is any anomaly detected, it immediately alerts the respective Facilities Manager or IT Infrastructure Manager of the hospital with real-time notifications.

Thus the node immediately addresses and removed from the entire network or a necessary action is taken.

And the power of AI accompanies the process by giving predictive alerts on the anomalies that can happen with any node in the future.

What’s the next step?

Simple. Call or Request a demo at Smarthub.ai.

We take care of all your anomalies while your patients are enjoying a seamless and secure healthcare experience.

Manage all your million edge devices and their softwares with one unified platform - Smarthub.ai.