Incorporating the Internet of Things in the Modern Hospital: Attempting a 'Taxonomy' of Pertinent Equipment and Services

摘要

The Internet of Things (IoT) is not new, but it is attracting increasing attention recently. The concept of the Internet of Things entails the use of electronic devices that capture, monitor and transmit data, are connected to a cloud, enabling them to automatically trigger meaningful "events". The modern Hospital is the most complex and representative system created by the human society and in its present stage of development, the Internet of Things is able to lend itself, to serve the radical transformation of Health-care and of its "temple", the 21st Century Hospital. It is the purpose of this paper, to attempt a first elementary approach, to categorize the numerous and multifarious equipment and materials employed and to sort the services needed and offered, in the diverse Departments of the modern Hospital, under the light of the disrupting influence of the emerging IoT. The most important Hospital Departments and Services (Emergency, Surgery, Radiotherapy, ICU, Medical Imaging, Bio-Signals, IVD-Laboratories, Cell-therapies etc.), are presented in this preliminary "road-map approach", in combination with innovative, already existing and emerging, Health-care supporting IoT applications.