There seems to be a mismatch in the perception of IoT for “healthcare” or medical IoT (Reference article – originally published July 25, 2018, updated 2020, updated 2024). One stream of thought is driving the message of wearables, real-time patient information, telehealth and tracking patients who might wander into an equipment cabinet or the wrong ward, whether intentionally or forgetfully. That side of the message is very aspirational, future oriented, overstating impact, looking for patient buy-in. Wearables are not as easy as they look.
A second theme is the overarching institutional medical infrastructure side. The hospital itself, the management of equipment across a large geographical area, the provision of parking facilities, janitorial services, food concessions, heating and light, patient and care staff access, documentation, storage. This side is practical, hard edged and cost conscious. How do you find out more information about this topic? IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) HIoT (Healthcare Internet of things)- are the labels too broad and consequently nebulous?
Patient facing services
The mismatch is real. Patient-facing anything; wearables, bedside devices, whatever a patient or clinician touches and feels. There, “built to survive when nobody’s coming to fix it,” reads wrong. Where “rugged-industrial” is not a mismatch is the facilities and supply chain layer. An enormous technical operation that is entirely industrial in character…
Cold chain for vaccines, reagents, blood products; this is a priority already, just not badged “healthcare.” Hospital facilities monitoring: HVAC, backup power, medical gas systems, water systems in hospitals; unseen until a problem occurs. Medical equipment fleet condition monitoring (imaging, sterilizers, pumps). Asset-heavy, uptime-critical instrumentation, run by facilities and biomed engineering teams, not clinicians. Rural or field health infrastructure; mobile clinics, remote diagnostics, disaster response. You do not normally see outdoor GPS tracking framed in the “medical” context, but it can deliver plenty of value when seconds really matter.
Back-of-house
The segment of healthcare that has real affinity with “rugged reliable industrial” is the back-of-house infrastructure segment, not the front-of-house experience segment. That seems obvious in hindsight, but we’ve just taken 4 detail rich paragraphs to illustrate the core point.
If you’re a hospital administrator looking to get a project for a secure door system for a specific facility within your unit, you might find it harder than you think (if your initial search term is “medical.”). The keyword string reads better as “smart doors for secure facilities” which brings you into the domain of banks, defense, corporate hospitality, clean rooms, office spaces and public facilities (…a subset of which is a general hospital). The starting point is the product and the end point is your use case.
The value of industrial IoT applied to a medical use case is that tools are already spec’d for scale. Your hardware is already built for durability and long life service. Devices will be focused on maintenance, repairability and rapid deployment. These are the givens within an industrial domain that apply perfectly to a hospital setting.
