Internet of Things "12th-Five-Year Development Planning" formulated by the Ministry of Industry will be completed recently, which focuses on supporting nine major fields including the intelligent industry, intelligent agriculture, intelligent logistics, intelligent traffic, intelligent power network, intelligent environmental protection, intelligent security and prevention, intelligent medical treatment and intelligent furnishings. The intelligent medical treatment is a practical filed with strong market demand, which is close to people's livelihood. It begins to burst with the in-depth integration of informationization and industrialization as well as the dramatic development of Internet of Things, cloud computing and mobile internet.

Intelligent Medical Treatment Has Become Development Trend

Internet of Things technology will be extensively used in the surgical equipments, intensive care wards, nursing care in hospitals and family nursing. The combination of intelligent medical treatment with wireless network technology, bar-code RFID, Internet of Things technology, mobile computing technology, data integration technology will further enhance the efficiency and quality of services in the diagnosis and treatment process as well as the comprehensive management level of hospitals. It can be used to realize wireless supervision and to comprehensively change and resolve the problems and difficulties in modern digital medical mode, intelligent medical and health management, hospital information system, and to drastically demonstrate the medical resources sharing and reduce public’s medical cost.

By virtue of electronic medical treatment and RFID Internet of things technology, wireless medical supervision can be available; while timely collection and full sharing information on the remote and self-help medical treatment can relieve the dilemma of resources shortage and unbalanced distribution, therefore lowering the public’s medical cost.

Relying on Internet of Things technology, it intends to achieve the administration of hospitals’ assets, blood, medical wastes and disinfectant materials as well as the comprehensive inspection of production processes, market flow and medication.

Internet of Things technology and application platform can be used for family safety monitoring and real-time collection of patients’  information, which include the on-line real-time payment, diagnosis, analysis of pathological slices and intercommunication of equipments;.

On-the-spot medical data collection of disasters, especially secondary disaster, can be obtained via Internet of Things technology (including various interlink and intercommunication medical equipments), to realize the dispatching of on-the-spot uniform resources.

Intelligent medical treatment based on Internet of Things technology makes it easy to see a doctor. As a simple example, the patient could register in a hospital only by punching his/her identity card on a self-help machine; a doctor in any hospital could immediately see a patient’s all health-related information and examination data after inputting the patient’s identity card number; the doctor could know the patient’s heartbeat, pulse, temperature and other life signs who carries a sensor; in case of abnormality, the connecting intelligent medical system will warn the patient to visit a doctor in time and transmit medical treatment means.

Intelligent Medical Development Status

The development of intelligent medical treatment can be divided into 7 levels: 1, business management system including hospital’s charges and drug management system; 2, electronic medical record system including patients’ information, image information; 3, clinical application system including computer physician’s order entering system (CPOE); 4, management system of chronic diseases; 5, regional medical information exchange system; 6, clinical decision-support system; and 7, public health system. Generally speaking, China is during the transition period from phase 1, 2 to phase 3, when CPOE of true meaning has not been established yet, mainly due to lack of effective data, uniform data standards, suppliers’ clinical background, and standard guidelines for transition from standard to practical application. China intends to enter into phase 5 from phase 2, involving the formation of many industry and data exchange standards, which also needs improvement in the future.

The domestic remote intelligent medical treatment has developed faster. Mobile information application in the advanced hospitals has been at the leading edge. However, besides high costs, safety and privacy problems, it lacks long-term operating mode, scale and clustered industy.

Development Direction of Future Intelligent Medical Treatment

After applying Internet of Things technology in medical field, more people can share the limited medical resources by virtue of digital and visual mode. At present, with the increasingly significant community and health care development trend of medical services, real-time tracking and monitoring of physical signs at home with radio frequency (RF) equipment and other related terminal equipments; real-time diagnosis and health reminding for patients or sub-healthy persons become true via effective Internet of Things, thus effectively to reduce the occurrence and control the development of diseases. In addition, Internet of Things technology will play an important role in drug management and use.

With the development of mobile Internet, the future medical treatment will become more personalized and mobilized. Until 2015, over 50 per cent of mobile phone users could use mobile medical products, such as intelligent capsules, intelligent wrist guards and intelligent health detection products for effective measurement and transmission of health data by virtue of intelligent handheld terminals and sensors.

In the next few years, China's intelligent medical market scale will exceed RMB 10 billion and involve a wide range of industries around, equipments and products. The initiation of this market will not only impact on the medical service industry but also directly touch the intrinsic interest chain involving the network suppliers, system integrators, wireless equipment suppliers and telecom operators, thereby to affect the current layout of communication industry.