9. Applications of IoT

9.4. Health and Fitness

IoT appliances have proven really beneficial in the health and wellness domains. Many wearable devices are being developed, which monitor a person's health condition (see Figure 10).


Figure 10 

Block diagram of a smart healthcare system.


Health applications make independent living possible for the elderly and patients with serious health conditions. Currently, IoT sensors are being used to continuously monitor and record their health conditions and transmit warnings in case any abnormal indicators are found. If there is a minor problem, the IoT application itself may suggest a prescription to the patient.

IoT applications can be used in creating an Electronic Health Record (EHR), which is a record of all the medical details of a person. It is maintained by the health system. An EHR can be used to record allergies, surges in blood sugar and blood pressure.

Stress recognition applications are also fairly popular. They can be realized using smartphone sensors. Wang et al. describe an application, which measures the stress level of a college student and is installed on the student's smartphone. It senses the locations the student visits during the whole day, the amount of physical activity, amount of sleep and rest, and her/his interaction and relationships with other people (audio data and calls). In addition, it also conducts surveys with the student by randomly popping up a question in the smartphone. Using all of this data and analyzing it intelligently, the level of stress and academic performance can be measured.

In the fitness sector, we have applications that monitor how fit we are based on our daily activity level. Smartphone accelerometer data can be used for activity detection by applying complex algorithms. For example, we can measure the number of steps taken and the amount of exercise done by using fitness trackers. Fitness trackers are available in the market as wearables to monitor the fitness level of an individual. In addition, gym apparatus can be fitted with sensors to count the number of times an exercise is performed. For example, a smart mat can count the number of exercise steps performed on it. This is implemented using pressure sensors on the mat and then by analyzing the patterns of pressure, and the shape of the contact area.