How to simplify your IoT projects and create disruptive (even lifesaving) solutions quickly

By Stefan Spendrup, Vice-President of Sales Northern and Western Europe at SOTI

Mobility and the rise of IoT have boosted the operational efficiency of organisations and created new disruptive models for businesses. It has the power to solve some of the biggest problems in industry and society as a whole, yet the complexity and cost of designing hardware, software and applications to realise these benefits are still consigning many ideas and projects to the bin before they even get started. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Businesses no longer need to design and build custom hardware, develop custom apps and have lengthy R&D processes to solve these problems. User simplicity is often the key to successful IoT projects, and it’s from this lens that organisations should tackle new IoT projects. Now that’s not to say that complexity will not need to be tackled along the way, but the best starting point is to look at what off the shelf hardware and software is readily available, and then work with customisable solutions to connect them together and present a simple and user-friendly interface to the operator.

It’s through this method that ARMED, with the help of SOTI, sought to tackle the issue of falling in the elderly population with a disruptive new approach. According to a WHO Global Report on falls prevention, 34% of those over the age of 65 are at risk of falls, raising significant concerns for the future and presenting a complex problem that needed a quick solution. Figures from the NHS show that around 1 in 3 adults over 65 who live at home will have at least one fall a year and these falls cost the UK healthcare sector £4.6 million a day! So, a quick and cost-effective solution was needed… and fast!

Use what already exists

Using off-the-shelf hardware has clear benefits, it’s cheaper, it’s proven and it comes with a warranty. Someone has done the design, testing and manufacturing work for you already. There’s also the opportunity to repurpose existing hardware that already exists within an organisation or use refurbished devices such as previous-generation mobile phones.

When creating the ARMED solution, ARMED and SOTI took an Android smartphone and a Polar smartwatch, both consumer devices available on the open market, and looked to connect them via Bluetooth to monitor an elderly patient’s movements and send the data back to ARMED.

While undoubtedly quicker and cheaper than developing bespoke hardware, there was some complexity to overcome to ensure a constant stream of data from the smartwatch back to the ARMED central computer. The Android Polar app, for example, is designed only to download data from the smartwatch when it is accessed by the user, so a solution was required to overcome this issue. A customised SOTI MobiControl application is used on both devices to allow them to communicate the data with one another constantly, which is then connected to ARMED, where medical-grade machine learning algorithms are applied to forewarn of medical issues and changes in a patient’s behavior which could result in a fall.

Keeping things simple

It’s often said that there’s no need to reinvent the wheel, and the same goes for IoT software. There is no point in spending months of time and huge budgets creating bespoke software, when there is a range of off-the-shelf solutions available to manage various IoT devices through a single pane of glass. Customisability is key here, however, as you want and need to be able to change and upgrade the solution in line with user feedback. This simplicity mindset should follow right through to the end-user experience too.

SOTI and ARMED worked together to take customisable off the shelf IoT software and make it fit the needs of the project. SOTI’s MobiControl application, part of the SOTI ONE Platform, was adapted and simplified for the target audience of over 65s and had unique reminders for maintenance tasks, such as remembering to charge the battery. Additionally, SOTI’s software was able to strip the android phone back to the basics to keep things simple and easy to use for elderly patients, showing only the relevant apps that were needed. Personalisation of IoT software is the key to providing consumers with software that is right for them.

Looking to the Future

Ultimately, off-the-shelf doesn’t have to mean constrained. Using and adapting what already exists can actually free organisations from the cost and time implications that hamper so many IoT projects. After all, according to a Microsoft survey, 30% of IT decision-makers say their IoT projects failed in the proof-of-concept stage, often because either the implementation became too expensive or the bottom-line benefits were not clear.

This isn’t just the case for big projects. This applies to all areas of business mobility too. Did you know that developing a custom application for your business can take as long as five months and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds? Luckily cross-platform mobile app development solutions now exist to empower organisations to build the mobile apps they need quickly and cost-efficiently, without the need for specialised resources. Anyone can build an app by dragging and dropping the widgets they need so businesses can prototype, iterate and deploy apps in minutes or hours, not days or weeks.

From improving patients’ quality of life (as in the case of ARMED) and reducing friction in global supply chains, to helping retailers improve their customer experiences and keeping field workers safe as they tackle jobs in the toughest of conditions, mobility and IoT are already making a significant positive impact on the world’s economy, on businesses and even our own day to day lives. By reducing complexity and adapting what already exists, we can turbocharge this movement and overcome the barriers that stand in our way from creating the next disruptive new solution.