Conor Stewart
Research expert covering health & pharmaceuticals in the UK & Europe
Internet of medical things (IoMT) - statistics & facts
While the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) may sound elaborate, it is inherently simple. The wider term ‘Internet of Things’ was already coined in the previous century, and the IoMT segment covers all medical devices and applications interconnected on the internet. Prominent and widely used examples are remote monitoring, wearables, and e-prescriptions. The main benefit of the IoMT should be to improve patient health through more efficient treatment and to enable health tracking without being in a healthcare facility. In 2024, the global healthcare IoT market was valued at approximately 84 billion dollars, rising to 134 billion U.S. dollars by the end of the decade.
Wearables
Smartwatches are now a common sight on people around the world. In a short amount of time wearables such as these have developed from simple step counters to devices that can measure heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and other health metrics. Consumers are willing to share health data collected by wearables if it would aid the diagnosis and treatment of an illness, but even the act of wearing something like a smartwatch can encourage healthy behavior which also prevents diseases in the long term. Health data from these technologies over a long time can be viewed and analyzed by health professionals, and the non-invasiveness of wearables aids usability. Further smart wearables include smart patches, smart rings, and wristbands.Cybersecurity
Cyberattacks can affect the healthcare industry in multiple ways. There is an immediate risk to patient health if hospitals and other facilities cannot operate normally. There also could be financial damage if ransoms are demanded. The amount of data collected in healthcare unfortunately marks it as an attractive target. In 2023, over 171 million healthcare records were breached in the United States alone. Companies in the IoMT segment need to remain vigilant as attacks on them are very prevalent, and not one-off events. Among companies that received an attack involving an IoMT device between 2020 and 2022, around a third were attacked more than 16 times in this period. It has been put forward by experts that cybersecurity has not been a big enough priority in healthcare, with budgets lacking. Around half of healthcare organizations said they would increase their IoMT cybersecurity budget in response to a serious hacking incident of their medical devices. However, at this point, it may be too late, and cost more than if an organization had been more proactive with its security. High levels of trust will enable the IoMT market to continue to grow in the future.
