14 DAY TRIAL // Network connections seem to be becoming essential for all electronics these days, opening doors for hackers to cause mayhem, but also enabling many advancements, productivity and convenient opportunities.
Medical devices are one field where network connectivity will boom over the next five years.
According to Parks Associates, US sales of networked medical devices will exceed 14 million by 2018.
That’s five times better than in 2012, and makes me wonder what the full worldwide figure will be.
Interconnected medical devices used at present include glucometers, ECGs, weight scaled, etc.
Protocols like Wi-Fi, ANT+ and Bluetooth are used for the links, allowing information like behavioral data, sensor input and tests results to aggregate and more easily be used to find solutions to whatever issues may arise.
Platforms like Qualcomm Life's 2Net centralize the data and can transmit it to the cloud. Their importance will rise from 2014 onwards.