Edge Computing and Healthcare

Many applications and emerging possibilities.

How Edge Computing is Transforming Healthcare

By Vanessa Braunstein

When analyzing healthcare and life science data from a distance, bandwidth congestion, network reliability, and latency issues can negatively affect outcomes. This is critical when timing is so important. To address these concerns, forward-thinking healthcare organizations are adopting edge computing, in which data is analyzed and acted upon at the point of collection.

AI-powered instruments, medical devices, and technologies at the edge are transforming healthcare and life sciences by bringing data processing and storage closer to the source, and providing real time insights to clinical and research teams.  This is incredibly important for healthcare delivery, where on-demand insights help teams make crucial and urgent decisions about patients.

Throughout the hospital, AI-powered edge technologies are already making a difference by helping to make surgeries less invasive, reducing radiation exposure in an X-Ray machine, and monitoring patients at risk of falling. 

According to the Deloitte and MIT Technology Review, 30% of all globally stored data is from healthcare and life sciences. Considering the amount of data coming from healthcare, it is becoming imperative to collect and derive insights in real time to help make faster clinical decisions. 

In US hospitals today, 10-15 edge devices are connected to each hospital bed, monitoring the patient’s current real time status.  By 2025, it is estimated that 75% of medical data will be generated at the edge. Additionally, the global market for connected medical devices is expected to grow to $158 billion in 2022, up from $41 billion in 2017.

To scale virtual patient services, manage medical devices, and support smart hospital technologies, health systems must now process massive amounts of data closer to data-gathering devices in order to reduce latency and enable real time decision-making. By bringing AI workflows closer to the source, edge computing provides many advantages to healthcare:  ,,, ; '