Leveraging IoT Technology for Good
Global businesses and communities have consistently turned to the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to increase efficiencies and deliver better services. Research supports this sentiment as Juniper predicts that IoT platform revenues will reach $66 billion in 2020, a 20 percent increase over last year’s figure.
More recently, the firm predicted that “businesses seeking greater resilience in areas including supply chain and asset management, against external factors such as the disruption caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, will enable the IoT market to overcome the anticipated widespread economic disruption over 2020 and beyond.”
As global communities look to leverage IoT technology to help countries and cities provide better community services to its population, solutions with flexible capabilities will continue to be an optimal choice. The global Coronavirus pandemic is putting the healthcare industry under a microscope and there are many instances where organizations are turning to long-range, low power solutions such as LoRaWAN to develop applications that optimize hospital, patient care, and public health workflows through reliable and accurate data monitoring.
One such example is thermal temperature monitoring, which is a safer way to screen patients for high temperatures. Sensor technology enables usage at both an individual level and at a community level. For the individual, a wireless sensor leveraging thermal sensing technologies embedded into long-range, low power devices utilizing connectivity can communicate temperature data to Cloud-based applications for trend analysis.
Alerts can be pushed to mobile devices if temperature thresholds are exceeded, allowing the patient to limit exposure to others and seek medical attention. This type of technology can also be leveraged at a community level in public spaces, which enables public health officials to efficiently and reliably monitor populations on public transportation, at airports, railway stations, schools, shopping centers, large building entrances and more.
The task of monitoring and managing quarantined and isolated personnel remains a critical challenge. Health services employees, including disease control and prevention teams, are increasingly leveraging smarter applications based on IoT to provide efficient, high-quality care to their communities.
