IoT in Healthcare using HANA Cloud Platform IoT Services

[Former Member]

Internet of Things (IoT) is talk of the town and is thriving in each and every industry we can think of. Its applicability is quite broad and can’t be covered in one article. In this blog, we will have a look at its applicability and benefits in health sector. Last year SAP launched HANA Cloud Platform IoT Services, which, with increasing amount of smart devices and sensors, can prove quite fruitful in healthcare organizations.

After reading Mr Timo Elliott’s presentation on Internet of Things – for business and watching his presentation SAP: Technology Helping To Improve People's Lives, I started thinking more deeply about IoT’s applicability and benefits in health sector. As a result of which, I decided to write this blog as a part of my assignment for BCO6181(ERP Applications). This blog doesn’t talk about the technical aspect of how to implement IoT in healthcare but gives more generic information about the steps involved in implementing it in real world.

The figure below shows how connecting smart devices via HANA Cloud Platform can benefit both customers as well as business.

Let’s look at a couple of successful implementations of IoT in healthcare organizations:

Roche Diagnostics using SAP HANA Cloud Platform and SAP Connected Health.

Heidelberg University Hospital:

Now let’s have a look at how can we put it into practice. To begin with, we can divide the process in three steps:

Step 1 - The Wearables: A device to collect clinical data and to monitor patient’s health. This can be a fitness device, a smart watch or any other device with sensor.

Step 2 – Connecting device to HANA Cloud Platform (HCP): This is the major part. Here, we need to connect devices securely to HCP so that it can transmit the data in real time and create alert notifications in case of any emergencies.

There are two main components involved in the process:

Remote Device Management Service (RDMS):

• It allows us to add new devices or remove old devices from the system.
• Configuration of devices remotely and do data modelling.
• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are used to manage device type and message type.
• It allows us to update different parameters or upgrade firmware of device by sending required information and managing device remotely.

Message Management Service (MMS):

• This component is accountable for sending, receiving and storing IoT data in the persistence layer of HANA Cloud Platform.
• HTTPS and WebSocket protocols are used to transport data and JSON format is used to interchange data.

Step 3- Interface:

• In order to monitor and analyse the data gathered from the devices, we need an interface, which in our case is IoT Services cockpit.
• It creates very user friendly dashboard with some great visualizations and tiles to analyse the data in detail.
• SAP Fiori and Cloud for Analytics are also great tools to build interfaces and applications to improve user experience to a great extent.

To conclude, IoT can be a boon and save lots of lives if used properly. It can help prevent chronic devices by monitoring the changing health conditions of a patient. Further, it can send alerts to emergency services and doctors to provide timely medical aid to person in need.

With increasing popularity of fitness devices and health monitoring devices, IoT has started changing the way health industry operates.

For in-depth technical details, the following documentation is very helpful.

SAP HANA Cloud Platform Internet of Things (IoT) Services

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Special Thanks to:

Tony De Thomasis, SAP Mentor and Lecturer (BCO6181)

Paul Hawking, Associate Professor Victoria University

Inspired by: Timo Elliott, Innovation Evangelist, SAP