The global market for Internet of Things (IoT) medical devices is expected to rise to more than a whopping $500 billion by 2026, which will mainly cause major changes in healthcare IT. New medical pieces of equipment and devices are coming into the field of medical sciences, which makes the doctors’ and the medical workers’ work even easier. Today, infectious diseases are on the rise, COVID 19 has disrupted the lives of people throughout the globe. Simultaneously, people are seeking more healthcare and end-of-life care. According to the WHO, we are already facing a global scarcity of 7 million health workers, this could even go up and reach 13 million by the year 2035; which makes it even scarier.
If there’s a further digital transformation happening, it is safe to say that it’s impacting more than ever on healthcare. And that transformation is developing at the edge.
Edge computing is playing a major role in health services. Today, edge computers are being utilized to monitor patients, automates the delivery of care, and with the help of artificial intelligence, it improves the speed and accuracy of diagnoses.
What is Edge Computing?
Computers didn’t evolve just like that. For example, first, there was the ‘One Big Computer’, and then came the personal computers, and then slowly emerged the cloud computing era. We use personal computers, mostly to get hold of centralized services like Dropbox, Office 365, Gmail, etc. Anyway, taking this information into account, there are large companies that rely on this framework, machine learning, and compute power of cloud providers like Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon.
In this context, the word ‘edge’ refers to the literal geographic distribution. Edge computing is a kind of computing that is performed on-site or near a distinct data source, reducing the need for data to be equipped in a remote data centre. Computing that’s done at or near the source of data is cloud computing. Here, one of a dozen data centres does all the work, instead of relying on the cloud.
What is IoT
IoT or the Internet of Things is a total network of physical objects, which is regarded as “things” that are blended with software, network, electronics, and sensors, that authorize these objects to assemble and exchange data. It connects these so-called “things” and makes things interconnected and has the potential to execute certain tasks. The fundamental responsibility of an IoT architecture is to guarantee internet connectivity between devices such as industrial machinery, smart home gadgets, healthcare devices, and even smartphones and laptops.
Over the past couple of years, IoT has had an immense influence and has become one of the most prominent technologies of the 21st century. The Internet of Things facilitates seamless communications between people, processes, and things.
IoT truly makes everything virtually “smart”, by heightening aspects of our life with the power of AI algorithms, data collection, and other networks. The ‘thing’ in IoT can be almost any device today that can even become an animal tracking device or a remote-controlled drone. This shows the fact that how far IoT has unfolded. In a nutshell, the physical world is in sync with the digital world.
Benefits Of Edge Computing in IoT
The primary objective of edge computing is to decentralize data handling. Because of this, it leads to many advantages. They are –
- Much Better App Performance– For the data to travel back and forth between a device and the data centre, it takes some time. You can improve the overall app performance by storing and processing data close to its source. This also decreases the lag time and you can interpret the data in real-time, without any delays.
- Increased Data Security– This is one of the main benefits of edge computing in IoT, as it guards your network and enhances overall data privacy. It is rather challenging to take down the whole network as the data is centralized or allocated among the devices where it is composed.
- Reduced Operational Costs– You don’t need an abundance of cloud storage when you store and process the data in the so-called “edge”. Moreover, you can lay out unnecessary information and store important data.
- Much Refined Business Reliability and Efficiency– When there’s lower data traffic and deflated cloud storage, it results in more effective business operations. Plus, connection issues won’t be much of a problem as they are for other IoT products that depend on the cloud.
- Endless Scalability– With the help of edge computing, it helps you to scale your IoT networks.
How Do Edge Computing and IoT Play a Role in Healthcare Services?
Edge computing plays a major role in healthcare services. Today, it has become a boon to the medical industry as it provides various advantages. They are-
- It helps in real-time analytics and data processing.
- It enables more authority over the data and its security identifies breaches earlier.
- Subsequent actions and monitoring on critical vitals are effective even in the areas with poor connectivity.
- Meeting regulatory compliances, using edge capabilities and services strives to keep patient data close to the source.
- It manages latency and downtimes.
- Helps in managing costs as IoT and wearable devices can help healthcare organizations save up at least 25 percent of their business costs.
In healthcare delivery, edge computing helps in-
- High tech IoT and edge devices, which are carried out by patients, frequently record their vitals.
- With the help of customer premises equipment (CPE), virtual customer premises equipment (VCPE), gateways, and fixed switches, these data are transferred to the nearest edge servers for processing and the results obtained would be given instantly to the patients.
- The data that remains on edge servers is automatically synced with the cloud on a fixed periodic basis.
- In other cases, the edge computation device can further be disposed of directly for analysis and results.
Conclusion
Today, the rise of edge computing is prominent in almost every field, but most importantly in the field of medical sciences and health services. It has shown immense progress and has contributed vast advantages and has helped patients and the job of medical workers to become much easier. Especially in the time of the pandemic, edge computing and IoT services have played a crucial role, in monitoring patients from remote locations and come up with an action plan. The tech world is emerging faster than ever before and brace for more breakthrough inventions in the next couple of years.