Real-time Health Systems (RTHS) will be a key area for IoT in healthcare as Big Data Analytics tools and processes are utilized to evaluate both dynamic and static data for predictive analytics as part of comprehensive healthcare systems improvement programs.
EHR systems are far from omnipresent and most have not been designed with the Internet of Things, RFID and real-time data in mind; they have been designed, if all is well, to make healthcare faster, more patient-centric, more affordable and better from the perspective of the patient’s health and the work of healthcare professionals, based on rather static data.
These outcomes are also essential in many IoT use cases in healthcare, yet they are not always achieved. Moreover, there are so many approaches to the digitization of healthcare records that in practice an Internet of Things deployment needs to take into account these differences if it is related with an individual patient.
Not all health data from connected devices ultimately lands in the EHR/EMR environment. There are plenty of other information systems and systems of insight, depending on type of data, device, scope and purpose. Moreover, there is a shift towards Real-Time Health Systems (RTHS), which go beyond EHR and include awareness and real-time data capabilities in an IoT and connected/wearable device perspective. EHR systems are part of the broader context and processes within this RTHS systems approach.