How IoT, eSIMs, and AI are Revolutionizing Healthcare

From research to practice, modern medicine relies on the regular adoption of new technologies. The digital transformation of the healthcare sector is a worldwide endeavor, encompassing everything from administrative to surgical procedures.

The advancement of telecommunications has been key to this development. As mobile data networks and remote communications continue to mature, they have provided new levels of patient welfare, real-time symptom monitoring, and emergency alert systems.

Whether it’s improving communications within a hospital, supporting patients in rural areas, or conducting mass clinical trials, more accurate medical data can now be instantly recorded, assessed, and acted on in seconds. As with any technological shift of this scope, however, the advancement of connected devices in healthcare has also presented a series of new challenges that the sector must address.

Privacy in healthcare is critical – personal health monitors routinely transmit sensitive data. Ensuring the absolute security and sensitivity of such records in a digital ecosystem is a central challenge of modern medicine.

To enable real-time remote health monitoring, accurate and reliable coverage is also necessary for a functioning healthcare system. New medical software and technology must be subject to greater scrutiny than commercial products: errors in this field can be life-threatening rather than merely inconvenient.

By exploring the possibilities of eSIMs and AI, hospitals and governments around the world are revolutionizing their services to deliver new forms of care.

The IoT and IoMT

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the network of smart devices that communicate via wireless standards like Bluetooth, NFC, RFID, or mobile data. The industry has flourished in recent years, experiencing near-exponential growth as worldwide demand for connected devices continues to rise. Advances in eSIM technology and remote SIM provisioning (RSP) have enabled large-scale deployments of connected devices, contributing to the IoT’s industry’s rapid advancement.

An essential facet of this growth is the Internet of Medical Things, or IoMT.

According to Fortune, the fledgling IoMT industry is already valued at $60 billion. By 2032, this is predicted to exceed $800 billion, outstripping the CAGR of the wider IoT industry. Such growth has exposed challenges as well as solutions for healthcare professionals: in a changing industry, it’s essential to employ new digital services while protecting patient data and welfare.

Remote Patient Monitoring

Despite its relatively recent emergence, many IoMT devices, like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are already familiar sights, and consumer brands like Apple and Samsung have introduced healthcare monitoring features into non-medical devices like the Apple Watch.

CGMs and other wearable health monitors are part of a family of IoMT devices known as Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM). For many people outside of professional healthcare, RPM is one of the most visible examples of the IoMT in action. Advancements in connected devices enable patients to accurately monitor themselves without requiring training or a medical professional on hand.

• For patients, this ensures regular updates with minimal disruption, and avoids the need to travel to a hospital or clinic for routine checks.

• For healthcare professionals, it eases the strain on crowded public healthcare services and frees up time for staff to focus their efforts on more critical matters.

IoMT devices in action

1. Continuous glucose monitors

Continuous glucose monitors (or CGMs) are used by millions of people with, or at risk of, diabetes. Comprising a subcutaneous sensor on the upper arm, held in place by an adhesive patch, CGMs record blood sugar levels and transmit them to a nearby mobile device via Bluetooth or near-field communication.

By providing constant oversight, a CGM can alert the wearer of falling blood sugar levels and even anticipate spikes or drops. For users, this provides a greater degree of freedom in day-to-day life, cutting down the frequency of hospital visits for in-person consultations.

For healthcare professionals, CGMs reduce workload and waiting time by reducing the number of routine appointments and tests for diabetic and prediabetic patients. In the US alone, over 3 million people rely on CGMs for personal healthcare. Major consumer technology companies Apple and Samsung have partnered with CGM manufacturers to develop Smartwatch apps that pair with CGM monitors, indicating the widespread appeal for these services.

2. Ambulances

While CGMs and ECGs rely on short-distance wireless communications for personal healthcare, long-distance wireless transmissions play an essential role in modern medicine. A clear example is in ambulances, where first responders are required to instantly communicate with hospital staff.

Previously, ambulance-hospital communications were purely conducted over a dedicated phone line. Today, emergency personnel can transmit photos, X-rays, and medical records via a high-speed mobile data connection, helping hospital emergency staff to prepare diagnostics in advance and deliver immediate treatment to inbound patients. Real-time wireless communication also enables hospital staff to provide immediate instructions to ambulance personnel performing onboard procedures.

3. Maternity wards

For babies born in hospitals, an IoMT device is one of the first things many of them will wear: companies like Xtag and CenTrak specialize in RFID bands for newborns, tracking their location and position within a maternity ward.

These RFID bands support crucial infant protection processes like baby matching, or ensuring that the correct child is always with the right mother. Each band provides pinpoint location services and can trigger alerts when a band is tampered with or a baby approaches an exit. Along with new innovations like smart cradles and wireless incubators, from the very first day of life, IoMT devices are used to ease pressure on hospital staff and safeguard young patients.

The IoMT and telehealth

One of the great advancements of the IoMT is the ability to serve people who would otherwise have limited or no access to a hospital. Telehealth, or telemedicine, is a broad term that describes any long-distance medical communication between patients, hospital staff, emergency responders, and other healthcare professionals.

In practice, telehealth concerns everything from online meetings between hospital administrators to providing emergency medical instruction to humanitarian aid workers.

Advancements in mobile data networks and an increase in eSIM-compatible devices have made real-time communication possible in situations where any risk of slowed or dropped connection is out of the question. For video communications in a time-sensitive medical context, extremely low latency (the “lag” between sender and receiver) is essential.

• This has become a possibility with the ongoing rollout of 5G data networks worldwide, which offer higher speeds and minimal lag when compared to 3G or 4G systems.  

• The automatic network switching capability of eSIMs also helps to avoid downtime or signal outages by instantly reconnecting to a new local network in the event of an outage.  

• International eSIM providers 1GLOBAL offer access to a minimum of three networks per country of operation, sharply reducing the risk of downtime in critical scenarios. 

Launched in 2012, the eSIM (or embedded SIM) is a software-based SIM profile that can be remotely downloaded to a device, rather than inserted via a SIM card. As a digital product, eSIMs have several advantages over physical SIM cards in the healthcare space:

1. They can be remotely distributed and downloaded, connecting patients or medical devices in otherwise inaccessible areas.

2. They can wirelessly receive ongoing security updates, maintaining the latest health data transfer standards and protecting user privacy. 

3. eSIMs from a multinational supplier like 1GLOBAL can access multiple mobile networks in every country in which they operate, minimizing the risk of network outages or downtime.

Treating substance abuse with the IoMT

One of the many benefits of telehealth is the ability to provide ongoing medical attention to communities with no nearby healthcare facilities. For rural patients with long-term conditions or circumstances that require frequent check-ups, regular travel to a clinic can be an impossibility. Telehealth bridges this gap by providing medical services outside of a hospital.

One such case is individuals recovering from addiction and substance abuse disorder (SUD). West Virginia has one of the highest rates of opioid-related SUD in the USA, often concentrated in rural areas. By introducing new telehealth programs, local healthcare professionals can better address long-term recovery solutions and monitor those affected. Consisting of a wearable tracker and phone-based transmitter, CravAlert is a pioneering telehealth program, introduced by the State of West Virginia, to remotely aid recovering SUD patients and detect possible signs of relapse. By remotely monitoring metrics that may indicate stress or pain, typical precedents of relapse, CravAlert systems can instantly notify healthcare professionals and provide pre-emptive support, eventually reducing the risk of usage and overdose.

CravAlert is just one example of how the IoMT can provide round-the-clock medical support, with minimal intervention, to patients who would otherwise require lengthy journeys to receive medical care.

AI advances in healthcare

Connected healthcare devices and remote health monitoring collect vast quantities of hyper-precise data. Sifting through these numbers can reveal underlying trends and suggest new methods of treatment.

Systems like CravAlert have integrated AI and machine learning to refine the collected data and detect patterns that may lead to earlier and more accurate diagnostics.

Like the IoT, medical AI is still in its infancy. It is already widespread in research and treatment, used to analyze medical images, automate simple procedures, and deliver more accurate diagnoses.
As the global data demands snowball, AI systems will play a growing role in data-heavy sectors like medicine. Harnessing this development, together with eSIMs and IoMT principles, is foundational to a sustainable global healthcare system.

The challenges of implementing IoMT systems

When implementing any new connectivity service, medical administrators must assess the potential benefits together with patient confidentiality and data security risks. Health information is highly personal, with the standards of communications strictly regulated by national and international bodies.

In the US, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, upholds an evolving set of protocols for the management and communication of personal health information. Initially introduced during the Clinton administration, HIPAA policy is continually updated to reflect evolving communication methods in the healthcare sector. In 2025, HIPAA was once again updated to address some of the data regulation concerns around the IoMT.

Over in Europe, EU General Data Protection (GDPR) laws similarly scrutinize the wireless transmission of patient data. Medical information transmitted via eSIM or Bluetooth, for example, must comply with security guidelines set by the European Union.

The digitization of patient records introduces the possibility of data breaches. Health records are a valuable target for cybercrime, resold on the black market where they can be used to facilitate identity theft and extortion. In 2018, the American health insurance provider Anthem Inc. (now known as Elevance Health) inadvertently exposed personal details of over 75 million customers in a cyberattack.

Another challenge to telehealth is ensuring flawless connections and interoperability across borders. This is required for everything from international medical conferences to supplying medical aid in regions that straddle borders, or cannot rely on local mobile networks, such as conflict zones. In the rush to develop and implement new connected healthcare services, the IoMT faces a wide range of competing standards, security protocols, and regulations, which may expose it to a heightened risk of cyberattack. As well as protecting sensitive data, comprehensive cybersecurity measures in the IoMT are vital to saving lives.

As the industry continues to broaden in scale and scope, international data transfer standards have become essential to the future of healthcare.

A healthier future, powered by smart connectivity

The concept of smart health monitoring is no longer bound to clinical devices: smartphones and watches are increasingly advertised for their purported onboard health tracking capabilities.

The IoMT plays a vital role in the future of medicine: it delivers scalability to an increasingly under-pressure system and ageing global population. By 2030, the WHO has estimated that the world will be facing a scarcity of trained medical staff. When deployed responsibly, IoMT devices, together with eSIM and AI innovations, can help to remedy this.

1GLOBAL IoT

While the IoMT space stands on the precipice of high growth, IoT companies and health providers require scalable solutions that can supply this demand without compromising on patient security or reliable connectivity.

1GLOBAL IoT solutions are specifically designed for scalable, multinational use cases. Contact our team directly to learn more about how 1GLOBAL IoT services can benefit your organization.