The Internet of Things (IoT) and Health

There are a few times in history, along the development path of the human race, when two worlds collide to make for some evolutionary magic. While this has probably not quite happened for a considerable amount of time, if the predictions of a mere couple of decades ago were anything to go by, we’d be flying around in flying cars by now and we’d each have a chip implanted in us for the ultimate efficiency in developing and sustaining human life.

I’m not quite sure I would have personally volunteered or submitted to having a chip implanted in me, but conceptually I think it makes for a very interesting topic to explore. Of course, what I’m leading up to is a discussion about the Internet of Things (IoT) and where this world where pretty much everything we use is connected to the internet. You might have come across the use of IoT in business for data gathering and streaming business processes better (if not, learn this here now). In this article, you can read about how the concept of IoT is colliding with the health industry.

The concept

As much as the collision of the IoT and health exists as a conceptual ideal right now, the technology to make it happen definitely exists. It’s just a matter of the will to deploy it commercially and I guess the push-back something like what was largely said to be planned would receive from people who value their privacy, like me actually. So the idea was that all the technology which is deployed in the medical field to measure the causes of conditions such as deficiencies of certain nutrients would be shrunk right down to one device. That device would be the size of an implantable microchip which would then either permanently go into our stomachs or implanted somewhere along our bloodstream, functioning to do its job of detecting these deficiencies in nutrients.

How the IoT comes into effect though is that this microchip-sized scanner of sorts would then communicate with the various other devices connected to the internet and related to how we take care of our health, such as how it would communicate with the internet-connected fridge to order a helping of iron-rich food like liver and have it delivered by drone when it detects that you have an iron deficiency!

The darker side – privacy concerns

Ideally this is a great application of technology as it would be deployed in the health industry, but naturally there are privacy concerns as this sort of thing would mean that someone, somewhere could gain access to what can be sensitive information, like your credit card number, your home address, your medical records, etc.

Lessons to take away from the concept

Thankfully the push-back of the mere concept seems to have the idea of a chip implant deferred for the foreseeable future, but this should open our eyes to some lessons we can take away from the discussion. You don’t need to have a microchip implanted in your body to tell you what kind of food you should be eating and when the best time to be eating it would be. That’s some information your body already has readily available for you, such as how you crave certain foods when you want a snack or something.

With the right knowledge at your disposal you’ll be able to read those signs very accurately and match your snacking needs with what your body is trying to tell you you need more of. You can read more about the topic here, taking into account that you can even get some genetic testing done to find out what the best nutritional path for you would be.

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