9.1 Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects such as smart devices, actuators, and sensors that enables machine-machine and machine-human interactions. From these devices and sensors, data are collected that can be further used for analysis and action. With the increasing popularity of smart wearable devices such as smart watches, and the decreasing cost of sensors and chips, the application of IoT in the healthcare industry is growing day by day. With the continuing technological developments and their influence on people’s daily lives, studies show that the wearable markets will be worth more than $800 million by 2020. The growing global popularity also increases the necessity of making these devices even more powerful to meet the increased expectations.

Fig. 9.1 shows some of the common features of the IoT in different fields. Big data accompanies the IoT, as the amount of data collected from the different devices of the IoT is vast. Another feature is communication; if the data provided by the IoT is not used, monitored, analyzed, and turned into meaningful insights, intelligence, and actions, then it has no value. To generate information from these data, the IoT devices should be able to communicate with other devices. For the generation of this data, sensors, IoT-enabled devices, appliances, physical objects, etc. are needed that can capture different forms of action and context and turn it into data. The overall configuration and management of these data and devices can be handled through different computing architectures and platforms. All IoT-enabled devices, sensors, and objects need to be connected in a network having different IoT connectivity and network protocols and standards. The data collected within the IoT needs to be analyzed and the smart usage of these data converted into automated processes, improved efficiency, minimized errors, solutions to challenges, and completed objectives. Intelligence is needed to analyze the data, in order to make the IoT more useful and capable. Automation in industry, business, devices, and software all play a major role in the IoT. The IoT ecosystem defines the purposes and intelligent actions of the IoT overall, not only in just a few technological parts but in all the community and context of the Internet. Hence the IoT can be defined through these different characteristics and features.

Implementing the IoT through different technologies can provide many benefits to organizations. It can change the overall workplace with an increase in job opportunities, digital literacy, and data analysis. It can also increase workflow safety. The information collected from sensors in the IoT can be used to monitor confined and hazardous places and processes, which can minimize danger to humans or the environment, and the data can bring about better understanding of past events and mitigate future risks. The IoT can decrease the time required to collect, transform, analyze, and process the data collected as well as increase productivity. Also, organizations can benefit from the IoT by tracking behavior using real-time marketing strategies. The feedback and usage data collected from users provide guidelines for continuous improvements and create new business opportunities. Employee efficiency and productivity is improved by tracking people and processes and by tracing injuries, illness, absence, and incidents, providing the assistance needed for root-cause analysis, identifying any problems and their causes and finding appropriate solutions.

Recently the IoT has been widely adopted in the life sciences field. Many subfields such as home monitoring tools, wearable devices, and more recently mobile healthcare applications have gradually adopted the IoT. With real-time data collected from networked sensors, information generated from these data can be used for improving the precision, speed, and planning of these devices. The devices thus allow tracking, monitoring, and management to provide better judgments and to reduce the risks of errors. Because of this, the IoT has now made its way into healthcare, health monitoring, patient care, drug science, and life science. It is also playing a role in the pharma industry, especially in the drug value chain from drug invention, development, manufacture, sales, and marketing up to patient consumption. The IoT has been used at every level, from research and development to the marketing of products up to patient engagements. It has helped companies improve their production lines and supply chains, promote their marketing strategies and detect their pros and cons along with the effectiveness of their research and development. The goal has been to diagnose, treat, and prevent patient illness with reduced operational costs, achieving greater efficiency. This digital technology has been a revolutionizing method in diagnosis, monitoring patient care, preventing disease, and improving treatment methods. The use of the IoT by medical institutions and medical personnel has been growing in recent times.

The IoT has been applied in many fields and many others still show great potential for its implementation to solve ongoing problems. It can and has been used in smart cities to monitor the effects on buildings, bridges, or monuments of vibration, earthquakes, overloading, etc. It can be used to control and manage traffic, parking, accidents, and streetlights. Studies have been made to implement the IoT in home automation, where home appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and security systems can be controlled remotely through mobile devices. This can save time, energy, and money and can prevent theft and other security issues. The IoT has also found its application in smart environments for detecting pollution and natural calamities.

With the development of the IoT advancing with each passing day, factors such as data security, privacy and integrity concerns, high infrastructure development cost, and finite technical expertise in these areas have been some major issues to retard the speed of its growth. Despite the challenges, various types of IoT applications have emerged. Manufacturing, retail trade, information and finance, and other industries have so far been at the top in terms of value at stake. But with its major growth and large investment and scope, the healthcare industry shows a great potential for the future. Table 9.1 [1, 2] shows the projected evolution of foundational IoT technology in areas such as networking, software, hardware, and data.

The concept is shifting toward self-learning and self-repairing networks. With communications technology allowing more flexibility toward device-device communications, the evolution is toward more context-aware networks. In software and algorithms, the focus is shifting toward goal-oriented, distributed intelligence, problem solving, and things-to-things collaboration environments, which are required to enhance effective communication. Hardware has also been one of the key elements in the IoT. From RFID tags to sensors built into mobile devices in the early days, the focus has now shifted more toward biochemical smart sensors and tiny sensors with possibilities for nanotechnology and new materials. Also, data collected from the devices have been a key asset in IoT for information generation. These data need to be analyzed and processed in real time, so data processing methods need to be upgraded and smarter in order to work in real time. More context-aware data processing and data responses are being developed for processing big data in the IoT.

9.2 Background/Related Work

The IoT has become popular in many different fields, which have implemented it for different purposes and objectives. Fig. 9.2 shows some of the different fields where implementation of the IoT and development of smart devices have been much anticipated. The IoT has been widely used for wearable devices. In one study [3], a multiple case study was conducted to unfold a general business model that shows the influence of people in the wearable industry. Also in Ref. [4], the author describes the building blocks of wearable IoT (WIoT), including wearable sensors, Internet-connected gateways, and cloud and big data support, which the author has stated are key to future success in healthcare domain applications. In Ref. [5], the author has provided a review of wearable technology in the mining industry, where it is used for dust monitoring, supply chain management, and safety monitoring, and for outdoor environments, where the cameras in most cases are useful tools for site supervision and process control. A new concept of wearables along with the Internet of Everything (IoE) is presented [6], which is a combination of IoT, wearables, and the Internet of People (IoP). They have focused on the opportunities and challenges that are being created for organizations, governments, and every individual due to the flow of the IoE.

Smart homes have been another key area of IoT applications. Home environment devices, such as lighting, home appliances, computers, security, and the camera, can be controlled and monitored remotely, as they will be connected to the Internet. In Ref. [7], the author has used Frugal Labs IoT Platform (FLIP) for building an IoT-enabled smart home. With the increase in home automation and the use of sensors in the smart home, privacy has been a big issue in IoT. In this paper [8], the author has analyzed some key features to be added for a trusted smart home system. A smart home gateway architecture has been proposed, which is supported by web services for an automatic device and network configuration and automatic system update to solve the problem of security of the network, which is caused by installation and configuration to implement effective security policies.

Another key application of the IoT has been in connected cars. Implementation of the IoT to connect cars is at least part of the solution to problems of congestion, lack of parking spaces, and more crowded cities. In Ref. [9], the challenges of wireless connections between the vehicle-sensor, vehicle-vehicle, vehicle-internet, and vehicle-road are in combatting the harsh communication environment around the vehicle. Also in Ref. [10], the author proposed the concept of a home IoT-connected vehicle with a voice-based virtual personal assistant. They have shown that combining sequential repetitive tasks into one and executing the essential task automatically with authorized permission will allow users to gain trust in the remote execution of tasks.

Some of the other studies include development of a new smart queue system and its implementation in medical centers [11]. This software was built by using different programming languages, such as PHP, MYSQL database, and cloud-based storage. This system implements a queue system for reservations using both online and offline methods. Other technology has also been applied, such as in Ref. [12]. Researchers have used the ZigBee mesh protocol to develop an in-hospital healthcare system that can monitor the physiological parameters of the patient in the hospital. This has helped to minimize the total power consumption, increase the quality of care of the patient by regular monitoring, and reduce hospital costs. Also, recent works utilizing cloud technologies for data storage have been published, showing that the cloud is the best means to store and organize big data in the healthcare system [13].

In Ref. [14], the author introduces the application of IoT in the medical system with telemedicine, in clinical care and remote real-time ECG monitoring. In Ref. [15], the authors describe the importance of IoT technology in the roadmap of a smart city. They have suggested comprehensive demonstration sites and data-oriented smart city infrastructure to evaluate and verify the efficiency, economic feasibility, and influencing effects of developing IoT technologies and suggested services. The application of the IoT also includes identifying diseases in their early state so that the outbreak of chronic diseases can be better controlled. In Ref. [16], an IoT and fog-based healthcare system have been proposed to identify and control the Chikungunya virus (CHV). Emergency and warning alerts are also generated to alert healthcare personnel and the government to control the outbreak of this virus in infected areas. Hence with the help of IoT sensors, fog computing, mobile technology, cloud computing and the Internet, fast spreading diseases such as CHV can be monitored, identified, and controlled early.

In Ref. [10], wireless sensors and a mobile system network were combined to manage and remotely and automatically monitor environmental factors such as temperature, light intensity, ammonia gas, and food valve of a poultry farm. The smart farm provides real-time current information of the farm to the owner that can be monitored from smartphones. This reduces the cost, time, and effort and increases the quality and quantity of poultry farming. Similarly, in Ref. [17], a wireless sensor network is used in a poultry farm monitoring system to measure the temperature and humidity values. The data collected from these sensors are uploaded online and can be accessed using a web analysis application. This study has provided an online monitoring system to test the feasibility and reliability of poultry farm system. Other technologies such as Zigbee [18], a mobile system network [19], have also been implemented for advanced automatic high-tech poultry farming. This shows that the implementation of IoT sensors and data analysis can benefit in the monitoring and developing of our daily real-life agriculture industry.

In Ref. [20], a detailed study has been presented of monitoring the heart rate of a football player during a football match to detect possible heart problems or possible injuries along with sudden death. The author has proposed a distributed framework based on IoT for monitoring biomedical signals from players where intensive data acquisition and high processing is a necessity.

9.3 Sensors Used in IoT

Sensors have been a key element in the IoT industry. Sensors are used to collect data for any change in the physical device. Sensors detect a change in the environment, measure a physical phenomenon such as temperature or pressure, and transform it into an electrical signal. Different sensors have been used for different applications. The sensors can be simple, such as a temperature or pressure sensor, or more complex sensors that report a multiple data stream instantaneously. With the IoT devices moving toward smarter and more advanced automation, the need of the sensors to have more smart features to be able to solve modern-day automation challenges has been growing. These sensors should be smart enough and capable of communicating with each other and with other remote devices as well. The sensors should be more accurate and precise, and have low power consumption, small size, and low cost. Many IoT applications in home automation, wearables, industry, and healthcare have used advanced sensors to make their systems more advanced and smarter in their automation. Some of the sensors, their types, and application areas are listed in Table 9.2.

Many large and influential technology firms including Alphabet, Apple, Dell EMC, General Electric, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Philips, Samsung, and SAP have entered the IoT space in a big way and are hoping to make things happen quickly. They have invested heavily in this field and major research work is ongoing. Many IoT start-up companies in the healthcare field have appeared in recent years. They are working on finding new applications to improve the diagnosing, monitoring, and management of patients and treatment within the healthcare system.

Fig. 9.3 shows the mapping of the private start-up IoT companies that are operating in the healthcare sectors into different applications, such as infant monitoring, fitness wearables, biometrics sensors, etc. Among the many categories, start-up companies such as Augmedix and Obaa are working on wearables like smart glass for charting. Simplifeye uses the Apple Watch for doctors to track patient visits and access EMRs. Startups such as Awarepoint emphasize IoT sensors for tracking the location of a patient and medical equipment and AdhereTech tracks medicine adherence. Companies such as EarlySense and Monica Healthcare have focused on clinical and hospital settings based on connected biometric sensors. IoT devices such as clinical grade wearables are being developed by Quanttus and MC10, and an auto refractor has been developed by Eyenetra, a cessation tracker by Chrono Therapeutics, a smart thermometer made by Kinsa, ECG by Qardio AliveCor, and a fitness tracker wearable by Lumo and OMSignal. There are some companies such as Hello and Beddit who are working on sleep tracking and Owlet and Sproutling are working on wearable technology that tracks infants’ movements and vitals. Some of the real-life applications in progress in IoT and the companies that are involved in those fields are listed in Table 9.3.

9.4 Applications in Life Sciences

In the field of life sciences, integration of IoT is the latest way to improve patient health and advanced medicine. It has been a leading source of information, obtained from the data collected from the networked sensors. IoT has been applied in a variety of ways, from using sensors in machines to facilitate production to improve the reliability and responsiveness of the supply chain. Fig. 9.4 [21] shows the approach of using IoT in healthcare for sharing information. The complete information about a certain patient, which is stored in multiple locations such as a hospital, laboratories, or with a general practitioner, can be gathered through health information exchange using IoT and be displayed on an electronic device when needed. This will reduce the necessity for this to be communicated with the central server for information exchange. IoT can also be used to detect any failure in the machine in the production process. It is applied to collect machine sensor data, which can be used in the research and development department to improve the design and quality of the devices. Devices such as wearables, motion sensors, and facial recognition have been used to precisely measure the patient’s health condition and to adapt the prescribed therapies using the patient’s exact diagnosis. Some of the IoT-based smart devices that have been implemented in the life sciences are listed.

9.5 Benefits of IoT in Life Sciences

The IoT has provided some remarkable advancements in the life sciences industry. With the IoT, communication between devices and device-to-human is possible, and automation and control can be developed through these continuous connections. The advances in smart devices used in healthcare have proven beneficial to patients, medical personnel, manufacturing companies, and the healthcare industry in general. With data collected from the sensors of smart devices, the IoT has been able to boost performance in diagnosing diseases, monitoring patient conditions, developing preventive measures, developing new treatments, and inventing new and more powerful drugs. It has also led to improvements in the entire pharma industry as well as the healthcare chain. The big data collected from the sensors of smart devices in real time and the resulting diagnoses have proven beneficial for research and development units to develop new drugs and facilitate improved treatment and efficiency. Having more information has helped in decision making, making it easier, faster, and more effective. This has also greatly reduced the operational costs through faster screening.

Optimal utilization of energy and resources can be achieved by using IoT devices kept under surveillance and sending alerts of possible breakdowns or damage to a system. Reporting on parameters such as temperature, logistics monitoring, or warehousing can reduce costs in the supply chain, which directly reduces the total cost of the drugs. Also, by analyzing and monitoring the data collected from sensors, better marketing strategies and quality products can be developed to increase sales. With all these advancements, the patient is benefited as the end user. Improvements in the life sciences industry have improved healthcare equipment and methods, resulting in better diagnosis of disease, treatment procedures, drug efficiency, and patient healthcare. All this increases the comfort of patients and improves the quality of their daily lives. Some of the key benefits of the IoT in the life sciences industry are discussed in the following sections.

9.6 Challenges of IoT in Life Sciences

With every new technology, many challenges and issues arise that need to be tackled for ultimate success to be achieved. With much more access to consumer data, health organizations face significant challenges in managing, interpreting, and protecting patient data. As big data comes in, health systems must have the infrastructure, resources, and processes to extract the necessary information from it. Also, with cyberattacks on almost every network, the companies must invest heavily in protecting their networks. Following is a list of some of the more prominent challenges that the IoT faces in the life sciences field. Also, with increases in customer expectations, the continuous need to upgrade hardware and devices to make them smarter and more autonomous has been a big challenge for the IoT. Some of the other challenges for IoT healthcare services are power consumption, storage limitations, mobility, scalability, communication media, dynamic networks, and dynamic security updates. Some of the major challenges of IoT in life sciences are discussed in the following sections.

9.7 Conclusion

With the increasing use of IoT devices and sensors in the life sciences to remotely manage, control, track, and monitor healthcare elements, productivity has increased and errors are minimized. By providing real-time information collected from users, the quality of products and services will continue to be improved. Analysis of these data can be used for decision making, along with quality upgrading of the products. With many devices still coming into the network on a regular basis, the big data collected from these devices can provide many benefits. However, it will be a challenge to extract the required information from these enormous amounts of data. To manage such big data, the set-up and assembling of resources, infrastructure, and expert manpower will be a difficult task. The accumulated data will include sensitive information and thus concerns over data security, privacy, transfer and regulatory compliance also arise. To overcome these security problems, companies can use third-party cloud computing solutions to some extent.

The IoT also serves various purposes across the value chain of products, as it transfers data from patients to home, home to HCP, and from home to hospitals as well as to medical personnel. These data can be used in research and development centers to improve device performance. Key benefits that can be perceived from the IoT are an increase in workforce productivity, cost savings, opportunity of new business models, and better collaboration with colleagues and patients. Wearables, IoT-enabled biosensors, and robots for medication and supplies delivery in hospitals are some areas where the IoT will play a major role. Also, in future data handling techniques such as machine learning can be used for big data analysis and classification in life sciences.