Connected Healthcare or Technology Enabled Care or Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is an umbrella term used for services like telehealth, telemedicine, digital health, telecoaching, self-care, eHealth etc. It comprises of extensive use of connected health technology and mobile telecommunications converge.
IoMT offers several advantages and it is playing an important role in improving access to care, providing an alternate option to costly healthcare services. For example by making available huge amount of data for the Doctors it is helping in data-driven decision making and hence reducing the errors and risk involved in making tough calls and improving success rates.
Connected healthcare also enables remote monitoring of patients reducing visits to the hospital which improves the productivity of medical professionals and reduces the cost associated with hospitalisation and traveling for patients. By constant monitoring of the status of vitals of the patient it can predict any disease and take proactive measures.
Technology Enabled Care is thus empowering hospitals, clinics and other healthcare services to provide care remotely and it is set to revolutionise the way the healthcare sector functions.
MedTel, a Bangalore-based startup, working on this technology has developed a connected care ecosystem, using IoT enabled devices, an integrated SaaS web platform and a smartphone app. The company is providing telehealth solutions including connected IoMT devices such as digital blood pressure machine, body composition analyser, glucometer, pulse oximeter, portable ECG, and others.
The company at present is working on a concept of ‘Teleclinic’ which focuses of meeting healthcare requirements of people living in in rural areas in India which is estimated to around 900 Million. These ares suffer with the problem of non-availability of doctors and the company claims that its ‘tele-clinic’ can help on this front.
These Tele-clinics are equipped with tele-diagnostics and advanced multi-channel telemedicine platforms. Through this, hospitals & clinics in urban cities are enabled to provide services in remote locations through tell clinics. It uses an agnostic smart platform, iLab, that aggregates cloud integrated point of care devices, and provides access to all devices in one app, where any care provider can have tests like Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar, Routine Urine Analysis, Lipid profile etc.
The company is also working on providing prenatal care in rural areas, for this they are collaborating with the Govt. of Odisha, NITI Aayog (GOI), and an NGO. Under this, they provide Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) with a set of connected care devices to monitor high-risk pregnancies. The data — crucial indicators of the mother and baby’s health and development– is captured and analyzed by the app and patient-specific insights is generated that enables quick decision making.
MedTel Healthcare is also working on many other use cases and has products for Covid 19, Diabetes, Hypertension, etc.
