The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) promises to revolutionize the healthcare industry by improving patient care, facilitating home care of chronic conditions, opening the way for personalized medicine, and optimizing available resources.
The Internet of Medical Things is the “grafting” of the Internet of Things into telemedicine, where we place all those devices and related applications whose purpose is to monitor patients, collect valid and factual information and share it with all connected IT systems.
IoMT offers incredible opportunities in the medical sector, and according to some estimates it is an area that will reach a value of hundreds of billions of dollars within the next few years.
From IoT to IoMT
Among the technologies that have seen more rapid and widespread adoption in recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) plays a leading role.
Undoubtedly, the availability of broadband and Wi-Fi connections, coupled with the possibility of integrating an increasing number of sensors within different devices, has led the way for the adoption of IoT in the business world, in public administrations, in people’s daily lives and in several other sectors, including healthcare.
And it is in healthcare that the application of the Internet of Things has become so specific and focused that it has given rise to a new class of applications, termed the Internet of Medical Things, IoMT.
The Internet of Medical Things is a key area of the digital revolution in the medical industry, enabling healthcare professionals to collect objective data and make timely and accurate diagnoses or treatments.
What is the Internet of Medical Things?
When we talk about the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), we refer to all medical devices connected to a facility or healthcare provider via the Internet.
These are devices of very different kinds and nature from each other that can generate, collect, analyze, and transmit health-related data.
The list includes wearable devices, remote patient monitoring tools, hospital beds, infusion pumps, drug tracking systems, medical inventory and equipment monitoring tools, and many others.
These are tools and devices developed with the goal of making healthcare activities more effective for patients and more efficient for providers and, in fact, lay the groundwork for what many analysts are calling a revolution in healthcare.
The IoMT can help monitor and inform healthcare providers as well as provide them with actual data to identify problems before they become critical or to speed up innovative processes.
The security challenges of the IoMT
When we talk about MIoT we are dealing with health data and therefore sensitive data. In fact, the number of connected medical devices and their complex functionalities present additional data security risks. For example, devices such as defibrillators, pumps, pacemakers and many others are connected via Wi-Fi to take advantage of remote monitoring capabilities and NFC technologies.
The benefits of IoT in the medical field are undeniably compelling, but as hackers (and malicious actors in general) take advantage of the usually low level of security of connected devices, the defense of these devices and the users connected to them has become no longer negligible.
Vulnerable medical devices could be (and often are) connected to an array of sensors and monitoring units, representing potential access points to large hospital networks for the theft of sensitive electronic medical records or for devastating ransomware attacks that can take entire critical systems hostage.
Given that most hospitals today have an average of 10 to 15 connected devices per bedside, it is easy to see how the exposure to risk is enormous and constantly growing. Indeed, healthcare data is extremely sensitive and therefore valuable and attractive to cyber criminals.
From the promising prospects of the IoMT market arise new challenges that healthcare providers can address, in collaboration with specialized operators. The goal is maximum (technical) protection of data and infrastructure, without underestimating the essential role of security awareness.
Learn more about Telsy’s cyber solutions on our website.