From ultrasound machines and ventilators to interactive, data-sharing knee implants and blood-pressure monitors, connecting medical devices over hospital networks and the internet is improving patient care and medical research.
The increase in digitally connected devices has created a buoyant technology market known as the “Medical Internet of Things”. By 2029 this software market will be worth approximately $134bn, up from $93bn in 2025, predicts Statista, a research company.
It is difficult to determine the exact number of medical devices connected to hospital networks worldwide but Gregg Pessin, a healthcare technology expert at research group Gartner, estimates the figure to be between 2.2mn and 3.3mn.
One example is a device developed by Impedimed, an Australian technology supplier, that can detect if someone is at risk of breast cancer-related lymphoedema — a common and debilitating side effect of treatment. The swelling, often in the arms and legs, can be painful and restrict movement.
The technology requires patients to stand barefoot on the device, which resembles a digital upright weighing scale, and place their hands on a platform. The machine sends a low-level electrical current through the patient to measure body fluid and composition.
It can detect lymphoedema in under one minute, using data analytics and cloud-based software to analyse, store and transfer the data. Test results appear on a web portal and are fed automatically into the patient’s electronic health record, allowing for earlier intervention.
Monmouth Medical Center, in New Jersey, is one of the hospitals using the device, which the American College of Surgeons has accredited. Manpreet Kohli, the hospital’s director of breast surgery, says that previously, a clinician at the medical centre would use a tape measure to check for early signs of swelling in a patient’s arms — a possible symptom of lymphoedema.
However, slight differences in how each clinician measured, for example, the circumference of a patient’s arm meant it was a somewhat subjective diagnostic tool, says Kohli.
“In the past, patients would come in with a swollen arm, and we would do measurements and . . . by that point [the lymphoedema] is usually already quite organised and it’s difficult to reverse,” she says.
Now, using the Impedimed machine, a clinician can detect an increase in fluid in a patient’s arm as small as “two and half tablespoons”. And that is helping the hospital catch more patients with early-stage lymphoedema — who do not have any visible symptoms — and treat them sooner.
Other healthcare technology providers are using AI and cloud computing to improve the clarity of scan images and make medical devices easier to maintain.
GE Healthcare uses AI software to optimise medical scan images taken by its ultrasound machines. St Luke’s University Health Network, a network of health clinics in Pennsylvania, US, is one of its customers.
Lauren Fazzolari, an ultrasound specialist at St Luke’s, says the technology has helped it improve patient care.
“You can make the [scan] image drastically different depending on how you set the machine and the general way the [sonographer] scans. By implementing standardisation, you’re able to control some of those variables and that’s going to increase your quality.”
And because every ultrasound machine can now be updated once centrally, staff no longer have to travel to different health campuses to update each one.
Some connected devices help doctors remotely monitor a patient’s recovery after an operation.
Canary Medical, a medical data company, makes sensors used in “smart” knee-replacement implants developed by Zimmer Biomet, another medical technology company. The implants incorporate sensors anchored in the shin bone that monitor a patient’s gait, movement and activity. That information is sent online via the cloud to the patient’s doctor, who can monitor the patient’s post-operative recovery.
Doctors can compare their patient’s recovery — based on age, gender and time since surgery — to that of other patients who have had the same operation, using data pooled and analysed by Canary’s AI software.
According to one US surgeon, Jacob Ziegler, who has implanted Canary’s replacement knee into a patient, one of the biggest benefits is an objective measure of a patient’s recovery after an operation.
“Historically, we had to do it very, very subjectively,” says Dr Ziegler who is based in Mankato, Minnesota. “And patients didn’t have any way of knowing what normal should be or what to compare it to.”
Yet despite evidence that connected medical devices can improve patient care, the resulting increase in sensitive medical data stored online also creates risks, experts warn.
When Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust in the UK used cyber security software from Armis to review its hospital IT network, it found more than 9,000 internet-connected devices — ranging from medical devices to staff PlayStation game consoles and electric cars.
Jeffery Wood, deputy director of information and communications technology at the trust, was concerned that a higher-than-expected number of connected devices could increase the risk of cyber security breaches.
To minimise security risks, the trust created four separate computer networks — including the main hospital IT network, another for connected medical devices and another for staff’s own equipment, such as mobile phones and laptops.
The new system has improved cyber security while giving hospital staff easy access to data on medical devices, Wood says.
Despite such security concerns and some regulatory hurdles, experts predict that connected medical devices will become ubiquitous and improve healthcare.
But they also caution that many medical devices are not yet used widely enough or receiving sufficient data to achieve their full potential for improving patient care.
As Gartner’s Pessin puts it: “We are collecting really rudimentary . . . [medical] data today. It’s as if we’re in first grade in calculus [and] we’re having a lot of difficulty just adding one, two and three . . . but we’ll get there.”
