Beyond IoT Devices: Future Operating Rooms And Ambulance Routing Are In The Making

Among the developments of the Center for the IoT in Healthcare of the Skolkovo Foundation, only 20% or 30% are wearable everyday gadgets. Everything else is complex projects that we collect from different technologies, including the Internet of Things.

For example, we have a project showing how ambulance routing should look to reach a patient with a heart attack.

Also, they can use such technologies for operations. How the operating room of the future can work was shown by Dmitry Dzukaev, head of the Moscow Spinal Neurosurgical Center No. 67. The operation occurred during the round table “Internet of Medical Things” at the Healthy Moscow Assembly. In the operating room, a mobile MRI machine, a robot, and doctors’ monitors worked in tandem, exchanging data. Dmitry Dzukaev followed the operation from the stage using cameras from the operating room; this is already an element of telemedicine.

Islets Of Telemedicine: Can Remote Consultations Replace A Doctor?

Sergei Voinov clarified that now it is impossible to make a primary diagnosis based on a telemedicine consultation. The patient must meet with the doctor in person and then consult with him, for example, based on data from a wearable device.

But telemedicine also makes physician-to-doctor consultations possible. For example, in a village in Yakutia, only general doctors may consult doctors from Moscow on complex cases. This is very important for Russian medicine because our country has a vast territory.

Through such consultations, patients will gain access to the experience of qualified doctors of various specializations. It is tough to build a vast multidisciplinary center, much easier to organize a small island with the necessary equipment, cameras, and a doctor. There are such islands in different versions: from points with small readings to KAMAZ vehicles with tomographs.

Why Doctors Miss Cancer And AI Can Help Detect It In The Early Stages

According to Sergei Voinov, each country has its problem, which medicine is struggling with. Often we are talking about oncology; for example: in Australia, cervical cancer is widespread, in Russia – lung cancer. If you look at all the tomograms by country or in some region for the last year, then, most likely, you can find cases of missed cancer. Finding the disease early will save many lives.

Missed cases do not mean that doctors are not performing well. It’s just that in all countries, the system is built like this: they looked at the heart of the fractured ribs, but they did not look for lung cancer. Therefore they did not find it. In addition, the country does not have the required number of doctors to view images for at least a year. The optimal solution is to introduce an artificial intelligence system.

It Is Believed That Medicine Is Closed To Technology. Is It True?

Indeed, there are such barriers, says Sergei. Even non-technological: it is not difficult for a hospital or region to introduce screening programs or distribute ECG machines. Instead, the problem lies in the area of ​​regulation.

There are many solutions based on artificial intelligence, but there are no regulations on registering them, by what criteria to separate reasonable solutions from bad ones. So far, we cannot say that artificial intelligence technology that has appeared that meets the Roszdravnadzor requirements themselves have not yet been formed.

Some medical innovations are taking longer than we would like. For example, some hospitals provide ECG machines to chronic patients for ongoing monitoring. They were issued earlier – as part of daily Holter monitoring. But if the doctor could view the data per day, then devices generate so much data in a week or two that it is impossible to process them.

The introduction of the IoT is inevitable, followed by systems for analyzing big data, artificial intelligence – all this will become an integral part of medical systems.

What Projects Will Be Most Relevant In The Future

Potentially successful cases from which experts expect widespread implementation in the coming years: IoT in the form of wearable devices and for solving other problems, innovative operating rooms. Companies are also actively investing in artificial intelligence. In general, according to Sergei Voinov, potential investments in medical startups could amount to 600 million rubles in the next few years.

Perhaps more investments will be made, given the current change in the situation. For example, in May of this year, American Well, which owns a medical video consulting service, raised $ 194 million in investments to cope with the growing demand for the services.

Also Read: MQTT: Internet Of Things Data Transfer Protocol