The application of internet of things in healthcare: a systematic literature review and classification

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an ecosystem that integrates physical objects, software and hardware to interact with each other. Aging of population, shortage of healthcare resources, and rising medical costs make IoT-based technologies necessary to be tailored to address these challenges in healthcare. This systematic literature review has been conducted to determine the main application area of IoT in healthcare, components of IoT architecture in healthcare, most important technologies in IoT, characteristics of cloud-based architecture, security and interoperability issues in IoT architecture and effects, and challenges of IoT in healthcare. Sixty relevant papers, published between 2000 and 2016, were reviewed and analyzed. This analysis revealed that home healthcare service was one of the main application areas of IoT in healthcare. Cloud-based architecture, by providing great flexibility and scalability, has been deployed in most of the reviewed studies. Communication technologies including wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi), Bluetooth, radio-frequency identification (RFID), ZigBee, and Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (LoWPAN) were frequently used in different IoT models. The studies regarding the security and interoperability issues in IoT architecture in health are still low in number. With respect to the most important effects of IoT in healthcare, these included ability of information exchange, decreasing stay of hospitalization and healthcare costs. The main challenges of IoT in healthcare were security and privacy issues.