A Review on Human Healthcare Internet of Things: A Technical Perspective

SN Computer Science (2020) 1:198 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-020-00205-z REVIEW ARTICLE A Review on Human Healthcare Internet of Things: A Technical Perspective G. S. Karthick1 · P. B. Pankajavalli1 Received: 21 May 2020 / Accepted: 23 May 2020 / Published online: 11 June 2020 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2020 Abstract The Internet of Things (IoT) is a promising technology which interconnects the available resources to offer reliable and effective smart objects. The smart objects act as a definitive building block in the development of interdisciplinary cyberphysical systems and smart ubiquitous frameworks. The IoT revolution is improving the potential of healthcare infrastructures for providing quality care to patients and assisted living. IoT is renovating the traditional healthcare system with promising technical, economic and social forecasts. The current researches in the IoT have opened more possibilities in the field of medicine that aims to improve the quality of healthcare with minimum cost. This survey paper explores the advances in Human Healthcare Internet of Things (H2IoT) and analyses the present-day networks, architectures, topologies, platforms, services and applications in healthcare. This paper also surveys the challenges in H2IoT design, privacy, security, threats and attack classification. Keywords Human healthcare internet of things · Remote monitoring · WiMAX · ZigBee · Wearable’s · Medical sensors Introduction The vision of IoT aims at the interconnection of physical objects in an efficient, practical and standardized way via internet [1]. A global vision of such objects is accompanied with one single concept IoT with the use of sensors, and the whole physical infrastructure is tightly coupled through communication technologies, where network enabled embedded devices provide a smart monitoring and management system [2]. The remunerations characteristically embrace the intelligent connectivity between the devices, systems and services that goes beyond machine-to-machine (M2M) circumstances [3]. As a result, task automation is convincing all the fields. It provides solutions for widespread of applications such as This article is part of the topical collection “Advances in Computational Approaches for Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing, IoT and Cloud Applications” guest edited by Bhanu Prakash K N and M. Shivakumar. * G. S. Karthick P. B. Pankajavalli 1 Department of Computer Science, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India smart home, smart city, smart grid, industrial internet, connected vehicles, connected health, wearable’s, smart retail, smart supply chain and smart farming. One of the most noticeable application areas of IoT is health care and medical care, which will transform the traditional healthcare from hospital-centric to patient-centric [4]. The ubiquitous and personalized services of H 2IoT renovated the healthcare from career-centric to patient-centric [5–7]. The key benefits of IoT sensors and technologies influenced plenty of application areas. In particular, implanted sensors on patients collect the data remotely which aided to provide anticipatory healthcare by predicting the health problems earlier via the monitoring of vital signs. Implantable sensors have a cumulative history of success and deep impact on the persistent quality of patient’s life. Such transforming healthcare scenario with IoT is shown in Fig. 1. The IoT is likely to result in boom for many applications including chronic disease management, fitness maintenance, remote health monitoring systems and ambulatory caregiving to elder-parents. Amenability with treatment and prescription at home by medical practitioners are also one of the important potential applications. The healthcare smart objects such as medical devices, sensors, imaging and diagnostic devices constitutes a primary section of the IoT. IoTenabled healthcare services reduced the medical expenses, SN Computer Science Vol.:(0123456789) 198 Page 2 of 19 SN Computer Science (2020) 1:198 H 2IoT Network Design Taxonomy Fig. 1  Transforming healthcare scenario with IoT improved the quality of life and also reduced the device idle time through remote sensing. By 2020, IoT will be present in 85 percent of healthcare organizations and 75 percent of healthcare industries are expected to be transformed for providing quality services. A wide range of researches has been identified in order to monitor patient’s conditions which includes diabetes and parkinson’s disease [8, 9]. Some of the research looks to provide a continuous monitoring of patients for aiding rehabilitation [10]. Yin et al. [11] used various wireless physiological sensors which read and transmits the physiological factors of a person via a wireless communication medium. Plenty of determinations have been made in health monitoring and control [12], patient-centric drug identification [13], and ubiquitous healthcare [14, 15]. Many of the researchers and organizations have been dedicated to the development of IoT-enabled medical applications with the aim at increasing the abilities of healthcare systems [16, 17]. Remote monitoring system increases the efficiency of solving the patient accessibility problems. In USA, only 9% of physicians working in rural areas for 20% of total population and the past works revealed the healthcare inequalities faced by the rural residents [18]. Urban residents used to travel twice or thrice to consult a physician, specialist and through which they experiences the problematic effects for some common health conditions like diabetes and heart attack [19, 20]. Wearable sensors and remote health monitoring systems enhanced the reachability of physicians in urban areas to rural areas and reduced the disparities. This survey paper deals with: • Categorizing and summarizing the H2IoT frameworks into three different arenas. • Identifying and comparing the wireless communication technologies available for H2IoT. • Providing an inclusive study on H 2IoT sensing devices and technologies. • Discussing on the security and privacy issues from H2IoT perspective. SN Computer Science H 2IoT Topology H 2IoT Architecture H 2IoT Platform Physical Configuration of Sensor Nodes and Devices Logical and Structural Layout of Networking Components Middleware, Building Blocks and Frameworks Fig. 2  H2IoT network design taxonomy • Emphasizing the various applications arenas of H2IoT. • Highlighting the major technologies that modernized the healthcare domain using IoT. H2IoT Network Design Taxonomy The main intension of IoT is to provide access and control to a wide variety of pervasive and uniquely identifiable objects and devices. The network design taxonomy is a major constituent of the H 2IoT and it acts as a channel for the sending and receiving of healthcare data among connected medical devices. As shown in Fig. 2, this section presents the idea of H2IoT network design taxonom (...truncated)