What is IoT in healthcare?
IoT in healthcare, or the internet of things in healthcare, is the use of connected devices such as sensors, tags, gateways and routers to measure conditions and locate equipment across a healthcare estate continuously. Devices report variables including temperature, humidity, CO2, door state and asset location over LoRaWAN, BLE and cellular networks. The related term IoMT, the Internet of Medical Things, covers connected clinical and diagnostic devices. EasyNet Technologies supplies the estate layer, not IoMT devices.
What are the IoT devices in hospitals?
On the estate side the common device types are temperature and humidity sensors in fridges, cold rooms and wards, magnetic contact sensors on fridge doors, and air quality sensors measuring CO2 in occupied rooms. Alongside them sit leak sensors in plant rooms and risers, current transformers on plant circuits, people counters over doorways, BLE tags on mobile equipment, and the gateways, switches and routers carrying the data. Connected clinical devices are a separate category with separate suppliers.
What are 5 examples of IoT used in healthcare?
Five an estates or IT team can deploy directly. Vaccine fridge temperature monitoring, with a door contact to explain each excursion. Medical equipment tracking using BLE tags on loan pumps, wheelchairs and beds moving between sites. Ward air quality monitoring for CO2 and humidity. Leak detection in plant rooms and lab spaces. People counting in waiting areas and clinic rooms. Each is a hardware deployment against a building, not a clinical system.
What technology is used for hospital asset tracking?
Three technologies dominate hospital equipment tracking. Passive RFID needs a reader the tag passes close to, suiting stock at fixed points. UWB gives fine-grained position but depends on anchors installed through the building. BLE tags are battery beacons transmitting to whatever reader is in range. EasyNet Technologies supplies BLE beacons and tags plus cellular trackers, and the BLE reader in the catalogue is vehicle-mounted, so it covers transport routes and not floor-by-floor presence. We do not supply RFID readers, fixed BLE receivers, or the anchors behind UWB and real-time location systems.
How is a vaccine fridge monitored?
A temperature sensor sits inside the unit and reports at a set interval against the band that fridge has to hold. A magnetic contact sensor on the door records every opening. Together they separate a genuine fault from a door left ajar during a busy clinic, a distinction a temperature log alone cannot make. Reporting continues overnight and at weekends, when the building is empty and an excursion would otherwise go unseen until Monday.
How do sensors report from a basement plant room?
Through gateway placement, not a stronger sensor. LoRaWAN carries small packets a long way at low power on sub-GHz frequencies, but a plant room under a concrete slab still needs the gateway positioned where the path is shortest, often at the top of a riser or a stairwell instead of the comms room. Establishing that position is what the scoping stage is for, and it is the part most often left until after the hardware arrives.
Can sensors be installed without taking a ward out of service?
In most cases yes, and it is the main reason these deployments use battery-powered wireless devices. Environmental sensors, door contacts and tags mount with adhesive or a single fixing and need no socket and no cabling. Ceiling-mounted people counters are the exception: they need a power and network drop, so they are planned separately from the rest. The real constraint is access, and it is settled before anything is ordered.