IoT: New Era of Healthcare for Sensors Application

1. Introduction
The Internet of Things (IoT) is referred as novel evolution which gains tremendous popularity
around the globe especially in modern wireless telecommunications .The fundamental concept
backing Internet of Things (IoT) is the pervasive presence of variety of objects or things like
mobile technology, NFC (Near Field Communication), RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)
tags, sensors, actuators, Smart Phones, Tablets etc. consist unique addressing schemes to
interact and communicate among to attain required objectives. Now a days IoT being a reality,
was proposed by Ashton in 1999 and is linked to the concept of RFID regarding its usage in
supply chain. IoT, day by day establishing its niche by integrating every object for interaction
via embedded systems, creating highly distributed network of devices communicating both
ways with humans and even with devices. The concept of IoT marks high impact on various
aspects of everyone’s life as wide range of devices and communication protocols are under
rapid development process by industries and researchers in diverse fields like e-health, e-
agriculture, e-industry, smart cities, e-military etc. Internet of Things (IoT) produces tons of
data which has to be properly stored, processed and presented in efficient manner-for that
various other computing technologies like Cloud Computing provides a virtual infrastructure
for such utilities which integrates monitoring devices, storage of data, data analytics tools and
client based data delivery models. With growing trend of 4G Networks, LTE and WiMAX, the
vision towards IoT is also evolving. Internet of Things (IoT) requires shared understanding of
situation of users and devices; software architectures and pervasive networks to present
contextual information; and high-performance data analytical tools depicting smart technology.
Internet of Things, no doubt has transformed the use of Internet and Device to Device
communications in which devices, sensors and objects interact with one another and exchange
data and has also given birth to several other domains like Wireless Body Sensor Networks
(WBAN), Internet of Nanotechnology-Nano Things (IoNT) and everything is leading to one
combined terminology i.e. Internet of Everything (IoE).
Especially, as per as the healthcare sector is concern; modern medicine is striving would
be a moderate expression. The progress accelerates every day ‘without any remorse’,
transforming all known medical practices. Global healthcare evolves based on the latest
achievements of the planet’s greatest minds and amazing prospects of autonomous, self-
learning tech solutions. along with such rapid development, however, comes a strict necessity
to keep up with the pace. The good thing is that all medical fields are either looking to or
already go hand in hand with advanced technologies from diagnostics to therapeutics, from
paediatrics to complex surgery.

But what particular technology concept or combination of concepts can provide

sufficient monitoring and managing powers such an ever-growing, global niche requires is the
Internet of Things or IoT. Despite the concept’s relatively young age, it is already become
closely entangled with healthcare. So much that it is commonly coined as the Internet of
Medical Things. Extensive centralization and interconnection capacities the IoT tech provides
are difficult to overestimate. It brings health monitoring, remote treatment, hospital physical
and digital infrastructure organization to a whole new level.
 2. Literature Review
In the literature, we can find several healthcare remote monitoring systems. For instance, like
our prototype, Zhang et al [1] presented an information system capable of alerting managers
when pre-defined rules were activated by the data obtained through the monitoring of different
IoT medical sensors. In our prototype, medical doctors may establish rules. We also remark
the work of Doukas and Meglogiannis [2] because the data acquired by the systems were
obtained also from wearable sensors and sent to cloud infrastructure (allowing general analysis
over big data in order to search patterns) and also directly to mobile phones accelerating the
communication. Catarinucci et al. [3] proposed a smart Hospital System that uses several IoT
technologies in order to automatically monitoring and tracking patients within hospitals using
UHF RFID technology. In [4] authors built patient location, tracking and monitoring services
within nursing institutes. In [5] authors proposed NIGHT-Care for monitoring the state of
disabled and elderly people during night by combining wearable and ambient tags. In [6], RFID
tags have also been proposed to be used. In [7] these tags have been used to track equipment.
In [8] the authors’ proposal allows to track the location of patients in indoor environments. In
[9] another complete system capable to monitor and track patients’ location is discussed. From
the technical viewpoint we remark the work of Xu et al [10], where authors proposed a
technique to access ubiquitous data for an IoT medical service by using unified format of
resources that could be accessed ubiquitously. Santos et al [11] proposed model different and
separately the concept of Gateways (entities that forward health data to a different destination),
health manager and health service in order to build a flexible connected health scenario. In
[12], authors used a three tier system architecture, where at the lowest level tier used a
Bluetooth-enabled wireless body area network in order to connect sensor nodes to a local
collector, which objective was to report measurements towards a gateway through a Zigbee
network. The gateway performed local computation and forward data to a node for real data
analysis. From an economical point of view, Fernandez and Pallis [13] discussed system-
engineering decisions such as how to build a cost-effective health IoT platform.

3. IoT for Nano sensors in health care application

Healthcare is concerned with the maintenance or restoration of the health of the body or mind
via the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and
mental impairments.
Nanotechnology is becoming a crucial driving force behind innovation in medicine and
healthcare, with a range of advances including nanoscale therapeutics, biosensors, implantable
devices, drug delivery systems, and imaging technologies.. A nanotechnology-based system,
for instance to eradicate cancer, needs four elements:
1) Molecular imaging at the cellular level so that even the slightest over expressions
can be monitored.
2) effective molecular targeting after identifying specific surface or nucleic acid
markers
3) a technique to kill the cells, that are identified as cancerous based on molecular
imaging, simultaneously by photodynamic therapy or drug delivery, and
4) a post molecular imaging technique to monitor the therapeutic efficacy

• Fitness Monitoring
When we usually log in to 'fitness monitoring' we probably think of the plethora of smartphone
apps and the bracelets and wristbands that are on the market. Nanomaterials are going to open
new realms of possibility for these monitoring gadgets.
Especially graphene could be crucial to wearable electronic applications because it is highly-
conductive and ultra-flexible. Possible applications could include, In a hospital, a patient wears
a printed graphene RFID tag on his or her arm. The tag, integrated with other 2D materials, can
sense the patient’s body temperature and heartbeat and sends them back to the reader. The
medical staff can monitor the patient’s conditions wirelessly, greatly simplifying the patient’s
care. In a care home, battery-free printed graphene sensors can be printed on elderly peoples'
clothes. These sensors could detect and collect elderly people’s health conditions and send
them back to the monitoring access points when they are interrogated, enabling remote
healthcare, and improving quality of life. More examples of these futuristic biofunction
monitors include temporary tattoos or electronic stickers for:
➢ extractions and measurement of the level of glucose in the fluid in between skin cells;
➢ revolutionize clinical monitoring such as EKG and EEG testing;
➢ monitoring the stamina and fitness and warns when athletes are about to 'hit the wall';
➢ Even sticker for teeth to monitor bacteria in your mouth.

• Diagnostics and Prevention

Accurate and early diagnosis of disease remains one of the greatest challenges of modern
medicine. As with any advance in diagnostics, the goal is to enable physicians to identify a
disease as early as possible. Nanotechnology is expected to make diagnosis possible at the
cellular and even the sub-cellular level with enhanced imaging techniques and high-
performance sensors.
Cancer diagnostics
More lives could be saved by early detection of cancer than by any form of treatment at
advanced stages. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs), which are viable cells derived from tumours,
are hypothesized to represent the origin of metastatic disease. Nanotechnology can be used to
develop devices that indicate when those markers appear in the body and that deliver agents to
reverse premalignant changes or to kill those cells that have the potential to become malignant.
With increasing accuracy, liquid biopsies – where CTCs are isolated from blood samples – are
becoming a viable complement or even alternative to invasive biopsies of metastatic tumour.
CTCs are of great interest for evaluating cancer dissemination, predicting patient prognosis,
and for the evaluation of therapeutic treatments, representing a reliable potential alternative to
invasive biopsies and subsequent proteomic and functional genetic analysis.
Two examples of nanotechnology in this area: rather than using magnetic and microfluidic
methods for the isolation of CTCs, researchers have demonstrated a carbon nanotube chip that
captures and analyses circulating tumour cells in blood. Others have used a nano silicon
platform to capture and release circulating tumour cells.
Quantum dots have finally taken the step from pure demonstration experiments to real
applications in imaging. In recent years, scientists have discovered that these nanocrystals can
enable researchers to study cell processes at the level of a single molecule. This may
significantly improve nanotechnology cancer diagnostics and treatment. Fluorescent
semiconductor quantum dots are proving to be extremely beneficial for medical applications,
such as high-resolution cellular imaging.

4. Conclusion:

Impact of nanotechnology on medical health care methods and facilities is noticeable from
several aspects. Some recent applications of nanoparticles both directly as sensors and
indirectly as performance booster of other sensor types by several orders of magnitude have
raised expectations for developing early detection/warning biosensors. The metal (gold, silver,
etc.) and oxide (zinc oxide, iron oxide, tin oxide, etc.) nanoparticles and semiconductor
quantum dots have proven to act in several case studies as labels in fluorescent immunoassay,
as selective target receptors for electrochemical and electromechanical sensors, and as base for
polymeric encapsulants for enhancing active surface area for Nano sensors for health care. This
helped in pushing down the detection limits for bacterial pathogens to a few cells per millilitre
and sub-ppb by volume for gaseous biomarkers. This is directly an outcome of nanomaterials
preparation and structural downscaling technologies and is a big relief for the sampling and
sample-enrichment procedures.

5. Future scope
The advances in fabrication technologies for nanostructures (silicon or silicon nitride
cantilevers, CNT, nanowires, etc.) and nanocomposite materials (gold or carbon black and
polymer conducting composites for chemi-resistive or piezoresistive sensors, nanoparticle-
enzyme composites for electrochemical and optical sensors, etc.) has enabled achieving
unprecedented bioanalyse sensitivities. The developments in microfluidics, micro-GC on
silicon substrates, and on-chip integration capability with microelectronics along with
potentialities of nanoparticles and nanostructures-based biosensors are enabling real-time LOC
smart systems for disease diagnostics. The nano sensors array-based e-noses at present appear
most appropriate for disease-specific developments for rapid screening and point-of-care
monitoring applications. These systems have better prospects for rolling out low-cost user-
friendly machines as they are mass producible through microelectronics foundries. The
aptamer nanoparticle conjugates as chemiresistor sensor and as bioreceptor surface coatings
on cantilever biosensors provide unique flexibility for adjusting selectivity and sensitivity of
nano sensors. Finally, we perceive a trade-off between speed, accuracy, and reliability of target
detection by employing several analytical methods in combination and applying methods of
information fusion. The latter may include patient’s social background, for healthy cities food
and lifestyle habits, disease history, age, and sex. This may not be appropriate for point-of-care
and at-home uses but may be prudent in selected cases of serious ambiguities.

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