Technological developments appear poised to transform the landscape of international health care as we know it. Big data and artificial intelligence are two examples of the new information technologies that are used in the concept of smart healthcare.
It appears that favourable changes will bring to a more streamlined, personalised, and efficient healthcare system in the future.
A fresh wave of intelligent medical technology
IBM (Armonk, NY, USA) first presented the idea of the “Smart Planet” in 2009, which is where the concept of smart healthcare first emerged. As per Tian (2019), Smart Planet is an intelligent infrastructure that gathers data through sensors, sends it over the internet of things (IoT), and processes it through supercomputers and cloud computing.
Furthermore, Tian (2019) asserts that smart healthcare is “an all-around, multi-level change, not just a simple technological advancement.” We will shift from a disease-centered to a patient-centered approach as a result of the transition. Additionally, the emphasis will change from being on treatment to being on preventative care.
Both human and non-human actors are involved in smart healthcare, including physicians, patients, hospitals, and research facilities. Fundamentally, it encompasses the following emerging technologies in addition to contemporary biotechnology: edge computing, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT), and next-generation wireless communication technology. Here, we’ll quickly examine each of AI and the IoT separately:
Artificial intelligence (AI)
The application of AI and related technologies to healthcare is only getting started. Key healthcare tasks have already shown AI to perform as well as, if not better than, humans. AI is actually a group of technologies rather than simply one:
a. Deep learning and neural networks in machine learning
b. Physical robots
c. Processing of natural language (NLP)The IoT, or the Internet of Things
As per Kelly (2020), the Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of wireless, interconnected, and networked digital devices that can gather, send, and store data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT can be applied to the healthcare industry in a variety of ways. For example, it can be used to gather health data from people using computers, smartphones, wearables and smart bands, digital prescription drugs, implanted surgical devices, and any other type of portable, internet-connected device that can measure health data.
To find out whether it’s OK to use the Internet of Things to measure consumers’ and clinicians’ degrees of digital literacy, more research is required. Nevertheless, it is projected that the Internet of Things will simplify the delivery of healthcare, from diagnosis to treatment to patient monitoring both within and outside of the hospital.It’s possible that
Future smart health care
How will the digital hospital of the future look? Digital hospitals are predicted to have significantly changed healthcare in as little as ten years.
Hospital treatment will increasingly rely on technology, but human interaction will always be crucial. Providing direct, compassionate care and empathy to patients will always be necessary and indispensable.