We are all well aware of the challenges of globalization, more so now than ever. The early decades of this century might as well be called the decades of the flu – SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and now COVID-19. The ill-effects of proximity are showing up in cruel ways with the risks that healthcare workers are being exposed to on a daily basis with this pandemic. Masks and maintaining distance may just become a way of life, unfortunately.

Being a technologist, I always looked at technology to find creative answers to problems and challenges we face or to make our lifestyle efficient and easy. And in these times, with social distancing being the one sure shot way to beat this pandemic, what comes to mind is using technology to minimize human interaction. The technology exists (as we’ve seen with in-home medical alert systems to complex RCVs and robots) to help people do what they need to do every day in a non-intrusive, connected but socially distant way. There is no better time than now to take advantage of such a technology to help not only patients, but care givers and, in fact, society as a whole, maintain that safe social distance. 

 At Sensital, we have taken this notion of healthcare alerting systems or even remote patient monitoring two steps ahead, by building an IoT platform that allows the two  parties – the subject (a patient or a senior needing assistance) and the service provider (a nursing home, a medical center or an on-call medical service) get what they need effectively and efficiently. Remote assistance service users generally need help with more than one thing – it’s not just their sugar levels or heart rate or blood pressure; they will very likely need a range of health parameters monitored. The service providers, on the other hand, need to be able to track and monitor multiple health parameters of multiple patients across different locations simultaneously and yet deliver to each of their patients all the customized services based on the patient’s specific health profile. This flexible, scalable and easily configurable capability is exactly what Sensital has built in its iBOTics IoT platform, allowing service consumers and providers to enable true holistic remote health monitoring. Support for bi-directional communication between sensors and devices, means that timely drug delivery can also happen, all remotely. 

There are other aspects of healthcare services like healthcare facilities security, tracking of medical capital assets, repairs & maintenance, visitors and their movements, etc. that also require people to manage. As we have learnt the hard way with the COVID pandemic, that not only patients, but also service providers are at a health risk. Therefore, there is a need to look at this idea of social distancing in a holistic way. With its flexibility and configurability, Sensital’s iBOTics IoT Platform also easily enables these features and functions to support the working of assets, both human and capital and making the entire healthcare delivery eco-system truly automated, remote and interactive yet safely separated.

Learn more about Sensital’s IoT based healthcare solution. Share your thoughts with us below. Reach out to Seemant directly at twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.