Background and Research Challenges for FC for Healthcare 4.0

The revolution in the healthcare domain was originated with the emergence of modular IT system in healthcare (Health 1.0) to the healthcare extension of Industry 4.0 (Health 4.0) integrated with Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber Physical Systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Big Data, Bioinformatics, Robotics, Precision Medicine, to cite a few. Applying IoT in healthcare 4.0, massive amount of patients’ data is generated by the sensors and this data is accessible to the doctors at any time and at any place for analysis and for appropriate line of treatment. The sensors in the healthcare domain of IoT need to be wearable and wireless to monitor the patients on large scale. In addition, the analysis of data and decision of treatment should be done and communicated in as little amount of time as possible. Thus, the aggregation, storage, analysis, and maintenance of data should be such that the data is continuously available, portable, consistent, accurate, scalable, secure, and quickly transferable. These challenges constraint the energy, memory, communication, and processing capacity of the end devices (sensors) used. Hence, instead of relying entirely on remote data centers using Cloud computing, the gap is bridged by means of fog computing (near the healthcare premises). The factors affecting the architecture of fog computing in healthcare domain are location of patient, latency requirements, geographic distribution, heterogeneous data, scalability, real-time vs batch processing, mobility of end devices, etc. On the other side, use of fog computing in the healthcare has substantial challenges for researchers and organizations including application-oriented architecture prototype, modeling and deployment, infrastructure and network management, resource management, mobility of patients and hence data mobility, security and privacy of patients’ data, scalability, easy incorporation of various healthcare professionals’ proficiency with intelligent devices and sensors, and minimum latency time in case of life threatening situations. This chapter discusses background and research challenges of fog computing in Healthcare 4.0 with an aim to guide the researchers and stakeholders for the overall improvement in the functioning of the healthcare domain.