Internet of Things in the Monitoring of Diabetes

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an important emerging technology that enables (usually) pervasive ubiquitous devices to connect to the Internet. Medical and Healthcare Internet of Things (MHIoT) represents one of the application areas for IoT that has revolutionized the healthcare sector. In this study, a review of literature on the adoption of MHIoT for diabetes management is conducted to investigate IoT application in the monitoring of diabetes, key challenges, what has been done, in which context, the research gap and thereby contributing to literature in the management of one non-communicable disease. The key findings reveal that developing nations are lagging despite the greater benefits of MHIoT in such resource-constrained contexts. The findings suggest that infrastructure costs, security, and privacy issues are most important in the adoption of MHIoT for diabetes management, and these need to be further investigated for maximum adoption of MHIoT. The opportunities presented by MHIoT surpass the challenges as healthcare costs are reduced in a resource-constrained context.