Survey of Internet of Things technologies for clinical environments

This work carries out a technical survey about the technologies available for wireless communication of personal clinical devices. The technologies considered are the most extended Internet of Things technologies, they have different purposes and features in order to cover the gaps required to reach a Internet of Things ecosystem, where the clinical devices will be powered with new characteristics such as communications, alerts, analysis, and remote monitoring. These technologies are 6LoWPAN/IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth Low Energy (BT-LE), and Near Field Communication (NFC). Each one of these technologies has a function in the context of mhealth and eHealth. NFC is used by a patient to access their current health. BL-LE can be used to gather information from the same room, environment and pathology. And finally 6LoWPAN can be used to check the status of several rooms and even around the hospital by any IPv6 device. This work analyzes each one of the technologies and defines when each technology is more suitable.