It is estimated that by 2025, the global wearable device market will reach 46.6 billion U.S. dollars, and it is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 20.5% from 2020 to 2025.

As the number of infections continues to rise, medical institutions are overwhelmed. In order to overcome this problem, medical IoT solutions and wearable devices have great potential because it can realize remote monitoring of patient health and automation of medical facilities. This can reduce overexposure to the virus and the burden on front-line medical care.

Let us understand how a wearable automatic health monitoring system that supports the Internet of Things can save medical staff time and work during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Vital signs monitoring:

Frequent monitoring of the patient's vital signs is part of the treatment. For this reason, health care professionals who are in physical contact with patients are likely to be exposed to this virus. This is where the wearable IoT solution comes in. It can obtain important readings, including body temperature, respiration rate, blood pressure, pulse rate, blood sugar level, etc., and send the readings to a Wi-Fi-enabled gateway device via Bluetooth, Zigbee or other communication protocols. The gateway device can in turn send the readings to the cloud, which can analyze the data and machine learning, and notify the nursing station when any patient's health needs attention.

Activity tracking:

The medical institutions that receive cases of COVID-19 are completely isolated to reduce the chance of the virus spreading. This wearable device can help track the patient's activities in the new coronary pneumonia isolation ward, thereby avoiding the need for manual duty. When a new coronary pneumonia-positive patient tries to leave the isolation ward, the wearable device can notify the nursing station by providing the patient's location coordinates to the cloud. Wearable devices can also alert other wearable devices nearby about the existence of patients with new coronary pneumonia.

Employee screening:

According to the COVID-19 guidelines, before allowing anyone to enter the business premises, their temperature readings should be obtained. However, it is also vital for healthcare professionals to frequently measure body temperature in medical settings. Wearable devices can periodically take body temperature readings of healthcare professionals and send them to the cloud. If the body temperature of any healthcare professional is higher than 37.4°C, the cloud can analyze the collected data and notify the nursing station so that the healthcare professional can be immediately isolated.

Contact tracking:

Contact tracing is a public tool to break the chain of transmission of new coronary pneumonia. For medical institutions, contact tracing is very important because the immune system of hospitalized patients is already weak, so they are very likely to be infected. This wearable device can help track contacts and block the chain of transmission.

Disinfection plan:

As for the preventive measures against COVID-19, keeping indoor and outdoor areas clean is one of the guidelines. Medical places should be disinfected frequently, because this is related to the health and safety of patients. Wearable devices can be programmed through a disinfection plan to ensure that the entire site is disinfected frequently without affecting the operation of the medical institution.