The Internet of Things and M2M: Digital healthcare and life sciences

This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

There are three key factors driving the IoT trend in the healthcare and life sciences sector: the aging population (and resulting increase in patients), the rising expenditure for medical services, products, diagnostics and devices and the increasing focus on "the quantified self".

The user group of hospitals, doctors, patients, drug and device companies is vast. Elderly patients especially have a desire to be cared for at home. Monitoring or tracking systems for example controlling blood pressure or other vital signs can be used for patient treatment and allow for timely intervention in cases of emergency. Increasingly people can (and want to) know how they are functioning. Through the integration with mobile technology, all of these systems can also be used on the go. Through IoT, hospital beds can be freed up for those patients who really need them, and a more patient-friendly healthcare service can be provided. A win-win situation for those who want this information and access, in any case from a non-legal point of view. Social and economic wise it all makes sense. But query then the collection and use of private medical data and the blurring of private and public. You want your doctor to know if you are are suffering an asthma attack but do you want them to know if you have exceeded your recommended amount of alcohol units in a week? that Whose responsibility is it if things go wrong, a device malfunctions or the medical tracker doesn't get the alert?

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