Equity in Healthcare IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects everyday objects to the internet, allowing them to send and receive information. Its application seems unlimited in scope and domain: transportation innovators depend on it for driving autonomous vehicles and creators of fitness wearables use it to collect and monitor personal activity.

Specifically, healthcare IoT has the potential to revolutionize patient care, streamline administrative tasks, and improve overall organizational productivity. Smart devices in hospitals for example, can aggregate patient records across care delivery sites, thus improving patient safety and efficiency of care. Healthcare wearables, like FitBit, are growing the global IoT healthcare market dramatically, such that its market size will reach $136.8B by 2021. With such benefits, what are the drawbacks, if any?

With connectivity to the Internet comes an enormous cost of cybersecurity, which hospitals, in particular, have yet to appreciate. As the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) articulates, “hospitals are the next target for cyber-attacks”, so hospital management must “change their attitude towards security.” The mentality shift is around security costs as they must “be a significant portion of the cost, or even greater than the cost of the components.”

Innovative IoT devices are thought to improve health outcomes, and, as the authors at zdnet and members of ENISA point out, increase the cost of IT security. I wonder what impacts these combined forces will have on equitable access to healthcare services. Will the benefits of such devices be enjoyed by the many or the few?