IoT services in healthcare industry with fog/edge and cloud computing

Abstract

A continuous growth in human population has made availability of healthcare services a challenge. In recent past, various online healthcare applications have been proposed, but they were not reachable to common people because of unavailability of suitable and cheap handheld devices. A few years back, when Internet of Things (IoT) was introduced with clear architecture and smartphones came into the daily routine of humans, tremendous growth is observed in the IoT technology. Though smart city, smart farming, and smart parking are various applications of IoT, healthcare domain has emerged as one of the most popular domains of IoT technology. IoT along with cloud computing, fog computing, and mobile edge computing are some promising technologies behind the buildup of an advanced, digital, and smart healthcare system. Automated patient monitoring, activity tracking, measuring heart rate, calculating calorie burn/intake, etc. are some of the tasks performed by IoT devices attached to sensors in healthcare systems. In this chapter the role of fog and cloud computing in an IoT-based healthcare system is presented along with detailed technical aspects of each of the technologies for the realization of a complete and efficient IoT-based healthcare system. Several aspects of these technologies in healthcare such as the IoT-Fog-Cloud continuum, the standard platform that facilitates the communications among these different layers and types of fog devices, have been discussed. Along with this a separate discussion is given on how IoT-based healthcare can be integrated and implemented using emerging computing technologies. At last, various research challenges and future directions are provided. © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.