| | October 20189Things will be a part of their fu-ture. Internet-connected devic-es have been introduced to pa-tients in various forms. Whether data comes from fetal monitors, electrocardiograms, temperature monitors or blood glucose lev-els, tracking health information is vital for some patients. Many of these measures require fol-low-up interaction with a health-care professional. This creates an opening for smarter devices to deliver more valuable data, lessening the need for direct patient-physician interaction.Imagine you are in a café when you get a Facebook noti-fication on your mobile handset about a friend posting photos from a party, and you log-in to put a `Like' mark on it. Now, imag-ine you are a cardiologist sitting in a café when a notification tells you of a critical patient -- and you receive an ECG chart and patient parameters on a mobile software application and quickly issue instructions.The former is fun. The latter saves lives. The technology is similar. Using the same technol-ogies that let people worldwide share friendly updates and banter, doctors, paramedics and diagnos-ticians are coming together to bring `cloud computing' -- the business of using Internet-based applications to store, retrieve and intelligently use data -- to the world of medicine. That's the power of the Internet.Internet has changed the way we live. Even if the Internet ap-pears ubiquitous, the number of objects or devices connected to the internet is still greatly inferi-or to those that are not connect-ed. The coming revolution will result from the need of replacing disconnected objects with con-nected ones, and making these objects ever more intelligent, and aware of their surroundings (us-ing sensors). The resulting net-work promises to create disrup-tive business models. We call this new step: The Internet of Things. In 2008 the number of devices connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on Earth, and we fore-see 50 billion connected things in 2020. Dutch multinational Philips, which has 10,000 peo-ple working in India, has devel-oped an `eICU' -- an electronic intensive care unit that brings together an array of diagnostic equipment, software, computers and handheld devices to provide an ambulance-to-patient bed link that its executives describe as an `Intellihospital'. "Like the moni-toring process in a traffic control room, an eICU can monitor pa-tients in different hospitals 24x7 and make key interventions at the right time," Philips says.India has more than 900 mil-lion mobile phone connections, while 740 million people live on less than Rs.100 a day. Philips is By Ravi Ramaswamy, Sr. Director & Head - Health Systems, Philips Innovation CampusRavi Ramaswamy | | October 20189
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