How to Build a Future-Proof IoMT App: Tech Stack & Vendor Tips

IoT, or Internet of Things, is an umbrella term that generally defines connected devices to provide automation and augment decision-making. Unlike general-purpose IoT, the medical context of IoMT healthcare applications directly impacts the quality of healthcare and treatments. Medical devices range from bandages and syringes to glucose monitors and DNA kits, then to surgical tools, pacemakers, and CT and MRI machines. IoMT is projected to grow in the short and long term. Some key statistics include:

• Grand View Research projects the growth for all three IoMT system components – hardware, software, and services – to be 18.2% annually (CAGR) between 2025 and 2030. 
• The IoMT applications support the growth of key healthcare fields, and their application is divided among the following segments: telemedicine (30%), clinical operations & workflow management (22%), medication management (20%), connected imaging (12%), and inpatient monitoring (10%). Though there are quite a few more use cases that take up the remaining 6% of the 2024 IoMT market. 

So, clearly, IoMT applications are actively reshaping the clinical care and operational efficiency of hospitals. Yet, IoMT application development comes with technical challenges, regulatory demands, and security vulnerabilities. Based on this, the success of an IoMT healthcare application is tightly linked to the choice of the right development partner with domain knowledge and technical know-how to deliver high-quality results in a rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.

Benefits of IoMT healthcare applications for Providers and Patients

In short, IoMT healthcare applications bring benefits across a variety of healthcare areas, such as:

• improving patient outcomes by increasing treatment adherence and precise medication administration.
• delivering major improvements in personalized care;
• optimizing and generating substantial cost savings in operational workflows;
• providing a new level of accuracy in diagnostics;
• transforming healthcare by offering real-time remote monitoring;

Case studies

Here are case studies to illustrate benefits for hospital financials and patients’ health.

• One of the Dutch Hospitals replaced TVs and phones at the bedside and installed smart single sign-on terminals. The ROI of this change was 50%. The hospital started saving $100,000 per 500 beds annually. The system also included RFID tags for nurses and doctors. This is intrumental for immediate access to relevant patient records, lab results, and imaging. In this case, the key benefit – operational efficiencies and cost savings.
• A similar system with additions of other wearables not only generates operational cost savings, but it also saves revenues. In the USA healthcare landscape, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)  penalize hospitals for high rates of re-admissions by reducing reimbursements. These penalties were $528 million in 2022. So, for instance, smart beds with ECG monitors in a cardiac unit can reduce readmission rates by 38%. It protects hospitals’ financials and ensures better health outcomes for patients. In this case, the hospital benefits from real-time data insights for proactive care that reduces readmissions and mitigates financial losses.
• In both case studies, patients benefit from improved engagement and better health outcomes.

Value-based medicine

Most importantly, the rise of value-based medicine in Medicare and Medicaid is going to push the IoMT growth even further. These programs financially reward health providers based on the quality of achieved patient outcomes rather than quantity. In order to measure what is good quality, IoMT devices and AI/ML analysis are used to benchmark patients’ outcomes. Below, you can see the high-level schema for AI/ML-enabled IoMT healthcare applications.

Main Challenges of IoMT Healthcare Applications

Challenges appear because IoMT branches out from the general-purpose Internet of Things (IoT) concepts. Many IoT devices lack any security protocols, ranging from basic device authentication to encryption and anti-tampering checks. However, the healthcare regulatory environment is much more stringent and needs these checks in place. There are ways to overcome these challenges, but it always takes time, as any solution should undergo clinical trials to get appropriate government clearance.

Overall, challenges of IoMT healthcare applications stem from three categories of issues:

• Data security risks, as sensors often lack built-in security protocols and become a target for cyber attacks;
• Patient data privacy challenges, as data collected from sensors and other data circulating in the IoMT system falls under the definition of Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA and similar laws;
• Interoperability issues arise from a variety of hardware devices, their different formats, and protocols as well as unstructured offline data integration issues like scanned records and physician notes.

Data Security & Patient Privacy

Smart watches or ECG monitors, like many IoMT sensors, transmit patients’ physiological data. This data may reveal the patient’s identity, diagnosis, and medical history. Contrasting it with general-purpose IoT devices, the main threat of stealing that data might reveal usage patterns. So, IoMT data security and patient privacy present serious legal and ethical consequences than most IoT devices.

Encryption, secure firmware updates, and access controls

Imagine a firmware like an insulin pump or a pacemaker receiving updates. If there is no cryptographic verification, malicious firmware can be installed, possibly leading to life-threatening consequences. It is nowhere near in terms of consequences to hijacked smart lights in a general-purpose IoT system. So, in the IoMT system, a hospital technician should have a different access role than a physician. Encryption, secure firmware update, and access control are critical to patients’ health outcomes.

Interoperability & Standardization

Healthcare data is varied. Patient demographic data, lab results, and financial data ll should follow a standardized HL7/FHIR-compliant data structure. However, there are often older devices or vendor-specific ones that entered use before the newer standardization. Moreover, there is offline unstructured data that should be integrated into IoMT healthcare applications. After all, even pressure readings from a connected cuff will not lead to meaningful clinical decisions without unstructured physician notes from prior visits.

HL7/FHIR, device certification, API management

In addition to HL7/FHIR and device certification, IoMT requires more attention when it comes to API management. For instance, a good vendor for IoMT healthcare applications should monitor industry developments. For instance, one crucial issue happened in June 2024, which was Apple’s iOS 18 Health App and Medical ID Overhaul. It made critical data become available via API in a standardized form, and Apple’s Health app aligned its app-generated data with clinical concepts, meaning it enhanced semantic interoperability. In addition, even though iPhones are not considered medical devices, their Health App data is trustworthy for consumer-grade platforms.

Regulatory Compliance for IoMT healthcare applications

In contrast to a general-purpose IoT system that needs to comply with basic consumer data protection laws, IoMT healthcare application has to comply with multiple and sometimes overlapping regulations. For instance, an IoMT wearable – a seizure detection device – will have to pass FDA rules in the USA market, and MDR and CE standards in Europe, while GDPR applies if the app for this device connects to the cloud. One more 2024 development was a partnership between GE Healthcare and Tampa General Hospital Imaging. These kinds of partnerships signal the baseline certification standards if an IoMT healthcare startup wants to build a solution for post-imaging workflows, such as an AI-based diagnostic overlay.

FDA rules, CE marking, HIPAA/GDPR considerations

A bit earlier development, year 2023, between Microsoft and specifically Azure OpenAI Service and Mercy, a US-based healthcare system, signals about investment and significant effort into bringing AI into the clinical setting. AI is also subject to HIPAA in the USA and GDPR if used in Europe. This is an example of an AI that will be matched to the considerations of clinical settings, such as traceability, auditability, validation, and privacy safeguards.

Scalability & Network Reliability

System architecture is another critical point for successful IoMT healthcare applications. After all, in an IoT system, it is OK to lose a couple of seconds in syncing a smart fridge. At most, it will cause a mild inconvenience. In an IoMT, a dropped packet on arrhythmia due to the volume of data coming from numerous devices means a missed alert, potentially affecting patients’ outcomes.

Building Your IoMT Solution: Best Practices for IoMT healthcare applications

As you’ve seen, IoMT healthcare app development requires a vendor with domain expertise and the right focus on addressing all of the above-mentioned challenges.

Device Selection & Validation

Going beyond the selection of clinical-grade IoMT hardware, HL7/FHIR-compliant APIs, and such, the IoMT system is very likely to require clinical trials. In addition, some essential types of systems require in-situ simulations – simulations conducted when the system is integrated into a physical hospital environment. This enables testing the system accounting for all the pressure and stress of a real hospital environment. 

Moreover, the best practice invites the vendors to factor in recent industry developments like the examples above: Apple Health App overhaul, partnership between GE Healthcare and Tampa General Hospital Imaging, and others. This is essential for future-proofing your IoMT application. 

Lastly, it will be beneficial to monitor the proposals in regulations to ensure that by the time your product gets to market, it does not have to redo a new regulatory compliance process.

Robust Network Architecture

Simply put, the healthcare system uptime target should be 99.9%+. The most common architectures include a mix of connectivity models and include fog layers between things and cloud layers, where edge computing is also enabled. 

Cloud & Edge Analytics Strategy in the context of IoMT healthcare applications

IoMT healthcare applications require several tiers of data analytics and pipelines. Starting with the devices, there should be initial on-device data processing capabilities. Then, moving outside the device, there is immediate edge computing for latency-sensitive tasks. Then, there is the fog layer that provides intermediate analytics, but the main function is often to enforce security protocols. The final cloud layer is where AI model training, data processing for dashboards, and secure long-term storage happen. The overview is shown schematically in the picture below.

UX/UI for Clinicians and Patients

This is the most rewarding yet challenging field for UI/UX designers who create interfaces and develop workflows so that patients suffering from serious conditions and doctors operating in high-pressure environments can navigate the IoMT healthcare applications quickly.

Moreover, information architecture also plays a critical role here – one cannot selectively present data because it might obscure clinical decision-making.

Continuous Monitoring & Maintenance of IoMT healthcare applications

IoMT healthcare systems are high-value attack targets. According to the HIPAA journal:

“In 2024, there were 14 data breaches involving more than 1 million healthcare records, including the biggest healthcare data breach of all time that affected an estimated 190,000,000 individuals. Across those 14 data breaches alone, the records of 237,986,282 U.S. residents were exposed or compromised—around 69.97% of the US population.”

Maintaining IoMT healthcare applications is also done for the purposes of ensuring accuracy and completeness of medical data, overseeing access to the data, recording and dealing with anomalies, and other necessary maintenance.

Choosing the Right IoMT Technology Partner

So, IoMT healthcare applications have three factors: clinical impact, regulatory compliance, and technical complexity. Your IoMT Technology Partner will be the most impactful on all these core elements. So, that is not just a mere vendor to whom you’ll outsource some tasks – for an IoMT product, the development partner is the core player that heavily impacts the overall success. Missing the mark with the right choice can inflate your budget, put regulatory compliance at risk, and delay the release to market by months. 

MVP development is a go-to strategy for most software products, including those in the IoT segment. IoMT is not an exception, yet IoMT MVP development will not be simple and should include:

• Security considerations for hardware and across the layers;
• Compliance with privacy laws, meaning access control and encryption;
• Integration focus and interoperability, including devices, and integrating offline unstructured data.

Vendor checklist

To ensure this, make sure you tick off these boxes when choosing the vendor:

• Proven domain expertise – particularly deployments in clinical settings;
• Strong security track record – check application of best practices in encryption, secure firmware update, access controls, and compliance with HIPAA/GDPR/FDA guidance;
• Interoperability-first approach – the vendor is well-versed in compliance with HL7/FHIR SDKs, APIs, and other third-party integrations.

Questions for vendor interview

And here are some essential questions to discuss with your potential development partner:

• What is your SLA for IoMT system uptime, including device and platform availability?
• How will you be handling integration issues with legacy systems and unstructured offline data?
• Do you provide a 24/7 support policy when it comes to updates, maintenance, and responses to anomalies?
• How do you ensure that the IoMT development process stays compliant with regulations and certifications?

It is also essential to highlight that even though IoMT MVP development can be complex, it is still enough to allocate 4 to 6 months timeline. If you have any reservations about the quality of MVP development, check out this article, “20 Myths About Custom MVP App Development: Busted” that addresses common concerns.

Final Words

Healthcare is strongly reliant on IoMT development across all essential segments, such as:

• telemedicine, 
• clinical operations & workflow management, 
• medication management, 
• clinical imaging, and 
• patient monitoring. 

Creating an IoMT healthcare application is rewarding in a variety of ways, yet it comes with quite a few technological, security, and regulatory challenges. Emerging solutions are often a step behind due to the need to test the system in clinical settings and undergo certification procedures. For instance, blockchain with smart contracts, which is so effectively utilized in finance, can be used in healthcare with great success. There are also research efforts in applying PUF (physicallyUnclonableFunctions), which can greatly improve authentication capabilities. However, it is still mostly in testing/research mode. Overall, the IoMT field requires a vendor with a proven track record in deployments in clinical settings and successful navigation of security risks and compliance requirements.

FAQ: How to Build a Future-Proof IoMT App