The Internet of things: creating the health care of the future

This paper provides a preliminary overview of the landscape of opportunities and drivers in the current health and health care environments and highlights some of the challenges that remain.

By 2020 it is estimated that 20–50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet. Many of these devices will be collecting health data or will be connected to health and medical devices in the home, the hospital or the wider environment. Many of these devices can be implanted in the body or worn in clothing to monitor vital signs or essential biological processes that enable more-continuous monitoring of patients or even animal health. The growth of the Internet of things is likely to open new disruptive business opportunities for services that add value to the data collected. It will involve supply chain management, disease management for chronic diseases, public health services in areas such as air quality or the traceability of products in the food chain for food safety.