The evolution of medical devices from the earliest days of medicine many thousands of years ago through the late 1990’s has moved from things you can hold in your hand, like a primitive scalpel, to a standalone box that measures body functions, or emits energy or mechanical force to provide diagnostic insight or therapeutical treatment. Something more dramatic has happened since then.
The internet took hold and over the last 20 years, we have seen a rapid progression toward all medical devices and information systems being connected. Irrespective of its first connection point, such as a watch, a phone app, or a box that sits on your bedside table, it is rare that the collected data ends its journey there. Data is moving inexorably to a slew of cloud or enterprise-hosted databases.