Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the recent innovations in Information Technology, which intends to interconnect the physical and digital worlds. It introduces a vision of smartness by enabling communication between objects and humans through the Internet. IoT has diverse applications in almost all sectors like Smart Health, Smart Transportation, and Smart Cities, etc. In healthcare applications, IoT eases communication between doctors and patients as the latter can be diagnosed remotely in emergency scenarios through body sensor networks and wearable sensors. However, using IoT in healthcare systems can lead to violation of the privacy of patients. Thus, security should be taken into consideration. Blockchain is one of the trending research topics nowadays and can be applied to the majority of IoT scenarios. Few major reasons for using the Blockchain in healthcare systems are its prominent features, i.e., Decentralization, Immutability, Security and Privacy, and Transparency. This paper’s main objective was to enhance the functionality of healthcare systems using emerging and innovative computer technologies like IoT and Blockchain. So, initially, a brief introduction to the basic concepts of IoT and Blockchain is provided. After this, the applicability of IoT and Blockchain in the medical sector is explored in three major areas—drug traceability, remote patient-monitoring, and medical record management. At last, the challenges of deploying IoT and Blockchain in healthcare systems are discussed.

The study was designed to develop bioadhesive patches of carvedilol hydrochloride using chitosan (CH) and pectin (PE) interpolymer complexes and to systematically evaluate their in vitro and in vivo performances. Mucoadhesive buccal patches of carvedilol were prepared using solvent casting method. The physicochemical interaction between CH and PE was investigated by FTIR and DSC studies. The patches were evaluated for their physical characteristics like mass variation, content uniformity, folding endurance, ex vivo mucoadhesion strength, ex vivo mucoadhesion time, surface pH, in vitro drug release, in situ release study, and in vivo bioavailability study. The swelling index of the patches was found to be proportional to the PE concentration. The surface pH of all the formulated bioadhesive patches was found to lie between 6.2 and 7.2. The optimized bioadhesive patch (C1, CH:PE 20:80) showed bioadhesive strength of 22.10 ± 0.20 g, in vitro release of 98.73% and ex vivo mucoadhesion time of 451 min with in a period of 8 h. The optimized patch demonstrated good in vitro and in vivo results. The buccal delivery of carvedilol in rabbits showed a significant improvement in bioavailability of carvedilol from patches when compared to oral route.

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