The impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on the advancement of the healthcare industry is immense. The ushering of the Medicine 4.0 has resulted in an increased effort to develop platforms, both at the hardware level as well as the underlying software level. This vision has led to the development of Healthcare IoT (H-IoT) systems. The basic enabling technologies include the communication systems between the sensing nodes and the processors; and the processing algorithms for generating an output from the data collected by the sensors. However, at present, these enabling technologies are also supported by several new technologies. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transformed the H-IoT systems at almost every level. The fog/edge paradigm is bringing the computing power close to the deployed network and hence mitigating many challenges in the process. While the big data allows handling an enormous amount of data. Additionally, the Software Defined Networks (SDNs) bring flexibility to the system while the blockchains are finding the most novel use cases in H-IoT systems. The Internet of Nano Things (IoNT) and Tactile Internet (TI) are driving the innovation in the H-IoT applications. This paper delves into the ways these technologies are transforming the H-IoT systems and also identifies the future course for improving the Quality of Service (QoS) using these new technologies.

The Future of Healthcare Internet of Things: A Survey of Emerging Technologies

The fast development of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in recent years has supported connections of numerous smart things along with sensors and established seamless data exchange between them, so it leads to a stringy requirement for data analysis and data storage platform such as cloud computing and fog computing. Healthcare is one of the application domains in IoT that draws enormous interest from industry, the research community, and the public sector. The development of IoT and cloud computing is improving patient safety, staff satisfaction, and operational efficiency in the medical industry. This survey is conducted to analyze the latest IoT components, applications, and market trends of IoT in healthcare, as well as study current development in IoT and cloud computing-based healthcare applications since 2015. We also consider how promising technologies such as cloud computing, ambient assisted living, big data, and wearables are being applied in the healthcare industry and discover various IoT, e-health regulations and policies worldwide to determine how they assist the sustainable development of IoT and cloud computing in the healthcare industry. Moreover, an in-depth review of IoT privacy and security issues, including potential threats, attack types, and security setups from a healthcare viewpoint is conducted. Finally, this paper analyzes previous well-known security models to deal with security risks and provides trends, highlighted opportunities, and challenges for the IoT-based healthcare future development.

https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/8/7/768/pdf

A Survey on Internet of Things and Cloud Computing for Healthcare

Smart wearables collect and analyze data, and in some scenarios make a smart decision and provide a response to the user and are finding more and more applications in our daily life. In this paper, we comprehensively survey the most recent and important research works conducted in the area of wearable Internet of Things (IoT) and classify the wearables into four major clusters: (i) health, (ii) sports and daily activity, (iii) tracking and localization, and (iv) safety. The fundamental differences of the algorithms associated within each cluster are grouped and analyzed and the research challenges and open issues in each cluster are discussed. This survey reveals that although Cellular IoT (CIoT) has many advantages and can bring enormous applications to IoT wearables, it has been rarely studied by the researchers. This article also addresses the opportunities and challenges related to implementing CIoT-enabled wearables.

Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT), Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges: A Survey

The last decade has witnessed extensive research in the field of healthcare services and their technological upgradation. To be more specific, the Internet of Things (IoT) has shown potential application in connecting various medical devices, sensors, and healthcare professionals to provide quality medical services in a remote location. This has improved patient safety, reduced healthcare costs, enhanced the accessibility of healthcare services, and increased operational efficiency in the healthcare industry. The current study gives an up-to-date summary of the potential healthcare applications of IoT- (HIoT-) based technologies. Herein, the advancement of the application of the HIoT has been reported from the perspective of enabling technologies, healthcare services, and applications in solving various healthcare issues. Moreover, potential challenges and issues in the HIoT system are also discussed. In sum, the current study provides a comprehensive source of information regarding the different fields of application of HIoT intending to help future researchers, who have the interest to work and make advancements in the field to gain insight into the topic.

/pdf/iot-based-applications-in-healthcare-devices-3wncwpumo6.pdf

IoT-Based Applications in Healthcare Devices.

https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=covid-19_research

Nano-enabled biosensing systems for intelligent healthcare: towards COVID-19 management

Surface electromyography signal plays an important role in hand function recovery training. In this paper, an IoT-enabled stroke rehabilitation system was introduced which was based on a smart wearable armband (SWA), machine learning (ML) algorithms, and a 3-D printed dexterous robot hand. User comfort is one of the key issues which should be addressed for wearable devices. The SWA was developed by integrating a low-power and tiny-sized IoT sensing device with textile electrodes, which can measure, pre-process, and wirelessly transmit bio-potential signals. By evenly distributing surface electrodes over user’s forearm, drawbacks of classification accuracy poor performance can be mitigated. A new method was put forward to find the optimal feature set. ML algorithms were leveraged to analyze and discriminate features of different hand movements, and their performances were appraised by classification complexity estimating algorithms and principal components analysis. According to the verification results, all nine gestures can be successfully identified with an average accuracy up to 96.20%. In addition, a 3-D printed five-finger robot hand was implemented for hand rehabilitation training purpose. Correspondingly, user’s hand movement intentions were extracted and converted into a series of commands which were used to drive motors assembled inside the dexterous robot hand. As a result, the dexterous robot hand can mimic the user’s gesture in a real-time manner, which shows the proposed system can be used as a training tool to facilitate rehabilitation process for the patients after stroke.

An IoT-Enabled Stroke Rehabilitation System Based on Smart Wearable Armband and Machine Learning

Advances in flexible and stretchable electronics, functional nanomaterials, and micro/nano manufacturing have been made in recent years. These advances have accelerated the development of wearable sensors. Wearable sensors, with excellent flexibility, stretchability, durability, and sensitivity, have attractive application prospects in the next generation of personal devices for chronic disease care. Flexible and stretchable wearable sensors play an important role in endowing chronic disease care systems with the capability of long-term and real-time tracking of biomedical signals. These signals are closely associated with human body chronic conditions, such as heart rate, wrist/neck pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, and biofluids information. Monitoring these signals with wearable sensors provides a convenient and non-invasive way for chronic disease diagnoses and health monitoring. In this review, the applications of wearable sensors in chronic disease care are introduced. In addition, this review exploits a comprehensive investigation of requirements for flexibility and stretchability, and methods of nano-based enhancement. Furthermore, recent progress in wearable sensors—including pressure, strain, electrophysiological, electrochemical, temperature, and multifunctional sensors—is presented. Finally, opening research challenges and future directions of flexible and stretchable sensors are discussed.

Non-Invasive Flexible and Stretchable Wearable Sensors With Nano-Based Enhancement for Chronic Disease Care

The inVention discloses a flexible combined wearable physical and mental state monitoring deVice The deVice comprises a flexible conductiVe clothing carrier which includes a Vest, a sleeVe and a gloVe The Vest is proVided with a Vest sensor module, and the Vest sensor module comprises a fabric electrocardioelectrode, a respiration sensor unit, a skin electric reaction sensor unit and a body temperature sensor unit; the sleeVe is proVided with an arm bag which is arranged at the musculus biceps brachii position of the upper arm, a control box is placed in the arm bag, and the control box is internally proVided with a power supply module, a control module, a wireless communication module and an indication module; the sleeVe is proVided with a sleeVe sensor module which includes an upper arm inertia measurement unit, an elbow flexible sensor unit, a forearm inertia measurement unit and an electromyographic signal collection unit; the gloVe is proVided with a gloVe sensor unit which includes a bending sensor unit, an opening angle sensor unit and a pressure sensor unit The flexible combined wearable physical and mental state monitoring deVice can meet different application scenes and function requirements, the physical and mental states of a wearer are monitored in real time, and the deVice is light, flexible, comfortable and formfitting

Flexible combined wearable physical and mental state monitoring deVice

The invention discloses a replaceable flexible sensing device based on a porous structure. The replaceable flexible sensing device disclosed by the invention is mainly composed of flexible sensing layers, a flexible electrode layer and a flexible substrate which are sequentially tightly assembled from top to bottom, wherein the flexible sensing layers are arranged equidistantly and in an array, strip-shaped raised parts are arranged at the two sides of the bottom surface of each flexible porous pressure sensing unit in a flexible sensing layer array respectively, slits are formed in the surface of the flexible substrate under the two strip-shaped raised parts, and the strip-shaped raised parts are mounted into the corresponding slits in interference fit; the flexible electrode layer comprises an upper electrode array layer, a lower electrode array layer and an intermediate insulation isolation layer, an upper electrode slice layer and a lower electrode slice layer are arranged under the bottom surface of each flexible porous pressure sensing unit, and each upper electrode slice layer and the corresponding lower electrode slice layer are isolated and insulated by virtue of an insulation sheet; and the top surface of the flexible sensing layers is a raised structure designed specific to a geometrical shape of a mounting plane. The replaceable flexible sensing device is removableand replaceable, cost for replacing the flexible substrate of the flexible sensing device as well as a printed circuit is effectively reduced, and fatigue durability of a flexible sensing array is improved.

Replaceable flexible sensing device based on porous structure

The invention discloses a high-tensile flexible strain sensor based on a porous flexible material. The sensor mainly comprises a main strain sensor body and a strain signal reading interface. The mainstrain sensor body includes a flexible substrate formed by cutting based on a flexible porous material, a conductive material and an encapsulating material, wherein the conductive material and the encapsulating material are attached to the surface of the substrate. According to the flexible sensor, the sensor has the good tensile performance, high sensitivity and large measuring range based on the internal structure design. The internal structure of the sensor can be distributed in different arrays to adapt to different usage environments and applicable conditions.

Yang Huayong

Papers

An IoT-Enabled Stroke Rehabilitation System Based on Smart Wearable Armband and Machine Learning

Non-Invasive Flexible and Stretchable Wearable Sensors With Nano-Based Enhancement for Chronic Disease Care

Flexible combined wearable physical and mental state monitoring deVice

Replaceable flexible sensing device based on porous structure

High-tensile flexible strain sensor based on porous flexible material