Towards remote healthcare monitoring using accessible IoT technology: state-of-the-art, insights and experimental design

Abstract

Healthcare studies are moving toward individualised measurement. There is need to move beyond supervised assessments in the laboratory/clinic. Longitudinal free-living assessment can provide a wealth of information on patient pathology and habitual behaviour, but cost and complexity of equipment have typically been a barrier. Lack of supervised conditions within free-living assessment means there is need to augment these studies with environmental analysis to provide context to individual measurements. This paper reviews low-cost and accessible Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with the aim of informing biomedical engineers of possibilities, workflows and limitations they present. In doing so, we evidence their use within healthcare research through literature and experimentation. As hardware becomes more affordable and feature rich, the cost of data magnifies. This can be limiting for biomedical engineers exploring low-cost solutions as data costs can make IoT approaches unscalable. IoT technologies can be exploited by biomedical engineers, but more research is needed before these technologies can become commonplace for clinicians and healthcare practitioners. It is hoped that the insights provided by this paper will better equip biomedical engineers to lead and monitor multi-disciplinary research investigations.