Health and social care FutureTech

IoT for health and social care

In 2019, CENSIS was commissioned by the Scottish Government to explore and support the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Scotland’s key economic sectors.

We held workshops across key industry sectors as part of our FutureTech programme, and as part of this programme, we explored opportunities around IoT in a health context in Scotland. This included a huge range of subjects, such as medical wearables, providing support and care in the wider community, personalised drug development, and maintaining an efficient hospital or care facility.

If you haven’t hear of the term ‘Internet of Things’, in its simplest form, it is about connecting devices to the internet, and to each other. This includes everything from a FitBit or Nest thermostat in a domestic context, to industrial IoT used to enhance manufacturing or make improvements in areas such as asset management or maintenance.

Have a look at our ‘Getting started with IoT‘ brochure for more information and examples of IoT in use.

The benefits of using IoT in health and social care might include

Monitoring the ‘health’ of buildings and improve their utilisation, particularly around large distributed estates.
Tracking assets including expensive, portable pieces of equipment in a building and find them easily
Gaining accurate, real time information on how rooms are being used. Learn how people really use a space over a period of time.
Smart grid meters for water, electricity, and gas to collect usage data and run analytics on that data to gain business intelligence
Alarm and health monitoring – wearables coupled with and in-home sensor and communication networks to helping older people to live independently for as long as possible. The existing analogue telephone lines for telecare – currently used by 170k people in Scotland – will be turned off in 2025, presenting a major opportunity to the introduction and application of IoT and other digital solutions

Use cases for health and social care

IoT for health at home
Hospital at home is the concept of traditional care delivered in the home environment as an alternative to a hospital stay or to allow early discharge. Examples of this are clinical monitoring of chronic conditions such as COPD and diabetes.
To enable the move to home-based healthcare, IoT medical technologies are essential to allow clinicians to monitor patients in real time to understand changes in health condition.
IoT technologies can be used for
- Connected diagnostics and point of care testing
- Medical equipment monitoring
- Oxygen tank monitoring
- Telecare alarm monitoring
- Activity/falls monitoring
- Cyber security
- Resilient communications for healthcare
Digital healthcare
Wearables, coupled with and in-home sensor and communication networks, could help older people to live independently for as long as possible. The existing analogue telephone lines for telecare – currently used by 170k people in Scotland – will be turned off in 2025, presenting a major opportunity to the introduction and application of IoT and other digital solutions.
There is a Scottish wide programme run by the Scottish Local Government Digital Office, who CENSIS are working with to support innovation activities in this sector.
The following areas are examples of where IoT technologies can be used to enhance digital telecare
- Telecare alarm monitoring
- Activity/falls monitoring
- Resilient care
- Smart home technologies/ home automation
- Diagnostics and generation of data to complement diagnosis
Smart hospitals
The smart hospital encompasses lots of different applications of technologies to enable the hospital estate to operate as efficiently as possible.
The following areas are examples of where IoT technologies can be used:
- Indoor navigation for staff and patients
- Space utilisation – understanding how to use the estate to its maximum potential.
- Patient & Staff Tracking – People/Attendee Tracking
- Healthy building monitors -indoor environmental monitoring including temperature, humidity, air quality etc.
- Energy usage monitoring and optimisation
Asset and equipment tracking
Hospitals and health facilities range from some of the most complex buildings to doctor surgeries. There are many items that can be tracked with IoT technologies
- Laundry Tracking – logistic tracking of laundry
- Access Control – controlling access to buildings and areas that need to have restricted access.
- Equipment tracking – portable medical equipment to patient used equipment such as wheelchairs crutches etc.
- Single-Use Items – Inventory Tracking/Out of Stocks
- Surgical Tools-Tool Tracking with Sterilisation & Autoclave/Returnable Asset Tracking
- Patient & Staff Tracking – People/Attendee Tracking
There are a number of different types of technologies that can be used for tracking with each one dependent on requirements of the application. Common technologies used in tracking are Radio frequency identification (RFID), GPS, Bluetooth beacons and LoRa.
Medical compliance
Within the healthcare industry there are numerous examples of where IoT technologies can assist with compliance within the healthcare system and estate.
- Cold and ambient chain tracking/reporting – understanding how medicines and heat sensitive products samples are stored and transported to ensure compliance
- Water safety tracking reporting for legionella risk – testing of water systems to ensure risk of bacterial is within compliant range.
- Surgical tools – tool tracking with sterilisation & autoclave/returnable asset tracking
- Surgery air flow monitoring – ensuring that there is a positive air flow in surgery wards to prevent infection risks.
- Equipment maintenance – understanding when equipment needs to maintained and when checks need to be made for PAT testing and calibration compliance.
Low carbon healthcare to reduce energy costs
Reducing energy costs across large estate is an area that IoT can enable better understanding of energy usage and control of the systems so that optimum comfort and energy performance can be met. The following areas are examples of where IoT technologies can be used:
- Estate energy monitoring- equipment power monitoring to energy system usage and power usage.
- Smart energy control systems linking sensors into Building management systems (BMS)
- HVAC control – using sensors to get better control of systems
- Estate utilisation – understanding how to use the estate to its maximum potential

Health and social care

We explored various areas of health and social care subjects within our CENSIS FutureTech programme.

This is an area where Internet of Things (IoT) technologies could deliver huge benefits and enhance people’s lives.

Sector knowledge

Within the FutureTech programme, CENSIS met with people from different sectors to hear their ideas about the transformative potential of IoT.

IoT technology will transform business operations across Scotland and impact every sector of the economy.

5 subject areas

The Scottish Government-funded FutureTech workshops were held across Scotland throughout 2019 in the subject areas of

Food and drink
Health and social care
Smart towns and cities
Transport
Tourism

Take a look at organisations we have worked with

If you would like to find out more about our work with businesses of all sizes, public sector bodies and universities, we have highlighted some of the challenges we have faced together with our clients.

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Take a look at organisations we have worked with