IoT influences our reality
What do you know about the Internet of Things (IoT)?
It’s the network of physical objects - “things ”, devices - that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies and can communicate and interact with others over the Internet while being remotely monitored and controlled. These devices range from ordinary household objects to sophisticated industrial tools. With more than 7 billion IoT-connected devices today, experts estimate that this number will grow to 10 billion by 2020 and 22 billion by 2025, connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the internet. Asset-intensive enterprises like utilities, oil, gas, energy, manufacturing, and construction are progressively deploying IoT solutions to conduct operations with greater productivity and decreased costs. At the same time, retailers, cosmetics producents, and healthcare providers use it to improve their testing, safety standards, and customer experience.
How different would the reality be without monitoring and data analysis?
The main areas of IoT use lie in optimizing cost, productivity, and improving safety measures. They do so by monitoring sensors and gathering and analyzing huge data sets.
Protecting and preserving a safe working environment for their employees is arguably the most vital goal to focus on. Therefore, companies use IoT-related solutions to monitor ventilation and toxicity levels inside underground mines in real time. It enables faster and more efficient evacuations or safety drills. IoT also helps the mining industry in improved and fast-decision making. As companies and their units face emergencies almost every hour, with a high degree of unpredictability, the technology proves helpful in balancing situations and making quick, accurate, data-based decisions in cases where several aspects will be active simultaneously. These factors help create much safer and more efficient working conditions. If the mining industry resigned from using IoT hardware and devices altogether, suddenly, all the risk, stress, and pressure of decision-making in crisis situations would befall its employees. In the long run, the consequences could include decreased productivity and efficiency, losses in equipment, and increased people’s endangerment resulting in increased rates of injury or even mortal casualties.
Similarly, in the cosmetics industry, IoT has become the way to improve ongoing customer engagement after purchase, creating a new generation of connected beauty products focused on customizing skincare to each user to increase efficacy and enhance the beauty treatment. IoT equipment is used in the earlier stages of developing new cosmetical products - researching their components, and determining the right temperature, pressure, and other storage conditions. For instance, IoT-related technologies are being used to increase the bio-availability of topically applied creams, thus improving efficacy and delivery, therefore providing improved and faster results. Due to these functionalities, IoT contributes to a safer, quicker, and optimized development and production process, along with perfecting the customer experience.
Without it, the progress and quality check of the products in the cosmetic industry would most likely not be as rapid and impressive.
What’s also worthy of notice, as the application for IoT in the cosmetics industry begins to gain traction and expand, a clear opportunity emerged for that technology to translate into the medical sector. For instance, in the transdermal diffusion of anti-inflammatory drugs in treating chronic and acute pain or increasing the efficiency of already used wearable devices that can track specific parts of a user's health like ECG monitoring, breathing, and posture. This area of IoT use can provide gain on the broader spectrum - the collected data illustrates which areas are at the most risk of issues such as obesity, diabetes, or heart conditions, and even provide health services with live monitoring of epidemics, critical data to solve population-wide health issues. A hypothetical resignation from using IoT - related technologies would have staggered this process, effectively delaying the achievement of general prevention and quick responses to individual emergencies in the medical sector.
We are waiting for the future, in which monitoring and past data analysis, data science, and predictive models will be used on a big scale to make even more incredible things. Are you?
Sources:
