IoT-Based Healthcare and Monitoring Systems for the Elderly: A Literature Survey Study

Abstract

The world is turning to Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to remotely monitor and control things faster and more accurately. IoT can be very beneficial in the medical and healthcare fields as it enables remote follow-up of chronic illnesses, monitoring of vital signs, emergency detection, diagnosis and prognosis of patient status or illnesses. IoT becomes evidently useful in the case of elderly healthcare and monitoring, which, in many cases, are tasks requiring full attendance of a caregiver or medical staff. The aim of this survey study is to shed light on the importance and classification of IoT-based elderly healthcare systems. The paper includes a review of research studies that report developments and utilization of IoT-based healthcare systems of elderly. The paper also includes a description of basic IoT-based healthcare systems architecture and ways of its implementation, including wearables, at hospitals and at home. The paper concludes with a presentation of the security challenges imposed by the nature of IoT systems implementation that require remote access to personal data and data storage. It is recommended from the surveyed studies that IoT will continue to expand as a technology trend that allows for development of inexpensive, reliable and secure elderly healthcare and monitoring systems.