Internet of Things (IoT) has taken all of our living standards to the next level. Isn’t it true? Well, for those who are not yet aware of this terminology; we will going to brief it quickly. It has not only influenced the lives of all of us, but it has also made a great impact on us with its strong potential. Most of the people might have got confused with the technical explanation, so here you can explore it in a more convenient manner.

The very basic concept of Internet of Things is establishing the connection between devices using the internet as a medium. Some of the common devices that employ this technology are coffee maker, smartphones, headphones, washing machine, oven, air conditioner, lamps and many more similar things.

Another noteworthy fact is that the components of devices also employ this technology such as drill or jet engine of an aircraft. Simply, if it is operating using ON and OFF button, it could be an IoT machine.

 

A Few Perks Of IoT In Healthcare Industry

• Technology based connectivity and sensors keep track on all the data and it eventually save human hours. So, the doctors and patients can easily diagnose improvements via treatment and prompt about the possible complications.
• Hospitalized patients usually experience swing in their physiological status. This could be easily tracked and the collected information can be stored using IoT. This way the doctors can make the changes in their treatment plan to improve quality of care from time to time. Here, this technology can be defined very well in the form of a very popular device; Masimo Radical-7. It is used for monitoring the environment of clinic and collecting the data. Further, this wirelessly transmitted data will notify the doctors. The device defines the status of the patient in the form of detailed picture on the touch based user-interface.
• Remote monitoring is another factor due to which healthcare is leveraged by IoT. It aids in keeping the track of patients who cannot get in touch with the doctor. As an example, we can consider a patient located overseas and not in the situation of travelling. So, in such cases, powerful wireless devices can allow the doctor to get connected and enable them to monitor the health data. The doctor can therefore recommend the viable treatment and medicines.
• Wearable technology is another platform that allow the users to keep the track on their calories, pulse rate, weight and pulse rate. All of these specify the health status and warn about the health risks.

It can be concluded, IoT based devices are not only managing the chronic diseases, but also helping the people to prevent diseases from time to time. Across the globe, there are many people who fail to detect the disease at the initial level because of the lack of guidance and treatment. Diseases like cardiovascular and arrhythmias could be detected by collecting and storing data remotely with the aid of cloud. Freescale Home Health Hub is one of the examples that is following the same phenomena of collecting the data wirelessly.

Now, it is a matter of fact that sending and receiving data using wireless device will employ the transfer of information in the form of packets. These could be easily hacked and thus, it could lead to data theft. Thus, apart from its innumerable perks, there are many more security threats as well. Let’s have a look over it.

 

IoT Security Threats In Healthcare Industry And Its Solutions

• A Huge Network Is A Huge Risk

A mammoth size network will definitely involve a numerous of devices that can offer ease in accessibility to clinicals, doctors, nurses, staff, patients and administrators. These serve anytime and anywhere accessibility, which is very essential especially for the patients who need instant communication or first-aid facility. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that the multiple accessibility will not only lead to corruption of data, but it also create possibility of the leakage of vital data.

Key to overcome: Always install anti-spyware or anti-virus protection or password protection. Based on the device and user’s role, accessibility should be provided. A track on network security status can be done to analyze the loopholes through which data leakage could take place. This recommendation is crucial for health organizations who have a plethora of vendors.

 

• Easy Accessibility Of Wearable Devices

Operating wearable devices has become a piece of cake these days. All age group people can operate it to track their health status. Sometimes, people also share these devices. Since, these devices do not have any password lock option, thus accessibility of last data becomes facile.

Key to overcome: Try not to share bands and other wearables with unknown people. The user can also reset the data as it will prevent data leakage. The best way would be keeping a password protection for the accessibility.

 

• Piling Of Data At Single Server

It is very usual that healthcare organizations employ a single server to store their data using varied wearable device applications. This will not only create the mess, but could also create a threat to data security. The reason being, if an operator is dealing with the data of one application and working on the server. It is obvious that operator can easily access the data stored by other applications.

Key to overcome: For each application, a separate server must be assigned, so that while working on the server other data do not get any theft risk.

 

• User-Friendly Wearable Devices

In the current scenario, the wearable devices associated with health care organizations have become easy to use. So, multiple types of devices and its internal components are diminishing the security levels. Some of the devices holds the feature of location tracking as well and this can lead to high risk in aspect of security.

Key to overcome: No matter, whatever is the device, it should have the password protection capability. In case, it is an equipment owned by a healthcare unit, then its accessibility must be restricted.

 

Summing Up

IoT has bursted out the excellent technology that has leveraged all sectors including education, railway, healthcare, transportation, telecom and many more. Out of all, healthcare sector is the one that has served a huge advantage to the humankind by introducing wearable and similar other devices based on IoT technology.

Acquiring incredible advantages in healthcare industry is amazing, but there are many security thefts that should not be ignored at any instance. Considering the security issues that can really cause adverse effects, we have discussed the same in our next post. There you can dig out various facts such as threat against security, sources of data theft and how it can be overcome.