IoT Evolution Health Conference Wrap Up: The Patient's Best Companion is Data

Last week, we wrapped the latest iteration of the annual IoT Evolution Health Conference, part of the IoT Evolution Expo, and this exciting and important program was all about a key issue: Data. Every speaker addressed one of the critical facets of the data stream, from collection to analysis to privacy and security. The lessons were many and varied.

For those of you couldn’t join us, read on for a very quick summary of what you missed, and for those who were in the room and earned your IoT Evolution Health Certification, here are my thoughts. I’d love to hear yours.

The agenda I originally conceived was a journey along with a hypothetical patient through the health system, as it could be enabled by IoT technology. Instead, thanks to the excellent speakers, we discovered that the real companion for any patient should be, and is, data.

A health record is currently the most valuable type of data available for sale on the black market – more than a passport or industrial secrets. Why? Because we all recognize that good medicine can only get better by adding more and better information, and the addition of that data makes the records valuable to doctors, patients AND hackers.  

Health information needs three things to be most effective for improving patient outcomes:

• Strategic and logical connected data collection mechanisms
• Analysis designed to show trends for diagnosis and predict outcomes that enable preventative care
• Security and privacy controls at a level above and beyond what we are doing now

So, it turned out that my true, secret, thesis is this: IoT and healthcare will continue to be inextricably entwined, and that’s a good thing.

If you were with us in Ft. Lauderdale, please let me know what you thought.