Menu

M2M FEATURE NEWS

The Internet of Things for Your Body

By Special Guest
Bhalchandra Ganesh Bhat, Manager, Business Consulting, VirtusaPolaris
January 04, 2017

Internet of Things. That’s the buzzword going around these days. When one says ‘IoT,’ what falls in that category? Refrigerators that tell you when you need milk, or that your car is parked in the garage? What else? What if your body could be a part of the Internet? That’s exactly what one leading manufacturer of devices for chronic pain coping therapies is doing.

The devices in question provide chronic pain coping therapy by sending small, highly-tailored electrical pulses directly into the spinal column. These are used in addition to, or preferably instead of, traditional opioid or other pain relief medications. The intention of these devices and therapies is to reduce or eliminate dependency on medications and increase the patient's quality of life. These devices are implanted inside the patient’s body and electrodes are placed inside the spinal column to provide the therapy. 

But every person has a different type of pain; therefore the placement of electrodes varies. After the device is implanted, the patient will resume their daily life and manage their pain as needed using the device and a radio frequency based remote control. During their daily routines and movements, the placement of the electrodes in the patient’s spinal column can shift. Also, as the patient is weaned off pain medications, other areas of pain, previously suppressed due to medication, might show up. Due to these reasons, the effectiveness of the therapy will decline and the device has to be updated to continue providing pain relief. Effectiveness declines, and patient compliance may diminish also.

So where does IoT come into play?

The current generation of devices lack network connectivity. Hence, patients and device programmers need to be physically co-located in a doctor’s office for performing updates. In certain geographies with lower populations, device programmers and patients might need to travel for several hours, requiring weeks of planning and scheduling. From the patient’s perspective, they would need to travel hours while in pain and under medication. Data collection also happens as the programmer updates the device. Considering updates don’t happen frequently, a lot of data is collected from the device and may take significant time to complete before the update is done. This often results in the programmer manually cancelling the data transfer to reduce the time required of the patient, losing the benefit of collecting data to improve outcomes. This also significantly limits the number of patients that can be assisted with updates to their devices.

For the next generation of devices, Bluetooth communication will be added and the device will be able to communicate with a smartphone and receive updates, as well as send usage data to the device manufacturer. This will provide remote programming capability to their patients, allowing them the convenience of staying in their own home and receiving updates for their devices. This will also allow collection of usage data directly from the device daily, driving creation of pain management offerings and plans custom fit to the patient’s needs.

So the next time you read about IoT, don’t be surprised to see the human body in the list of different “things.” Where we go from here is anybody’s guess. One could measure vital signs of the human body directly using such implants and allow a much faster diagnosis and treatment of issues, even before symptoms are visible to the doctor or the patient themselves.

This just might be the first step to creating a collective intelligence.




Edited by Ken Briodagh
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]


SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Beyond the Closet, Connecting to IoT

By: Gary Audin    11/11/2020

Two challenges arise when considering cable based IoT.

Read More

Banyan Security Enhances Secure Remote Access for Engineering Resources

By: Ken Briodagh    10/27/2020

Banyan's Continuous Authorization Can Grant or Revoke Access to Sensitive Engineering Environments and Applications in Real-time Based on TrustScore

Read More

Senet Eyes RAN Partnerships as Key to Delivering Network Services for Massive IoT

By: Arti Loftus    10/21/2020

To meet the challenges that come with providing network connectivity for IoT solutions, Senet is executing a strategy for massive IoT that will be bui…

Read More

mimik Selected by 5G Open Innovation Lab to Drive Early Adoption of 5G

By: Ken Briodagh    10/15/2020

mimik's patented Hybrid Edge Cloud platform will boost the performance and reduce the cost of 5G Networks

Read More

5G Sets New Standards for Vertical Industries' IoT Connectivity

By: Special Guest    10/13/2020

As 5G rolls out across the world, vertical industries across IoT are working on additional standards to make the technology suitable for their industr…

Read More