The Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare: Taking stock and moving forward

Recent improvements in the Internet of Things (IoT) have allowed healthcare to evolve rapidly. This article summarizes previous studies on IoT applications in healthcare. A comprehensive review and a bibliometric analysis were performed to objectively summarize the growth of IoT research in healthcare. To begin, 2,990 journal articles were carefully selected for further investigation. These publications were analyzed based on various bibliometric metrics, including publication year, journals, authors, institutions, and countries. Keyword co-occurrence and co-citation networks were generated to unravel significant research hotspots. The findings show that IoT research has received considerable interest from the healthcare community. Based on the results of the keyword co-occurrence network, IoT healthcare applications, blockchain applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, 5G telecommunications, as well as data analytics and computing technologies emerged as important topics. The co-citation network analysis reveals other important themes, including authentication schemes, fog computing, cloud-IoT integration, and cognitive smart healthcare. Overall, the review offers scholars an improved understanding of the current status of IoT research in healthcare and identifies knowledge gaps for future research. This review also informs healthcare professionals about the latest developments and applications of IoT in the healthcare sector.