Smart Items, Fog and Cloud Computing as Enablers of Servitization in Healthcare

TLDR

The OpSIT‑Project in Germany developed a healthcare application scenario that exemplifies the use of smart items and cloud computing. The article argues that smart items and cloud computing enable servitization as a business trend, presents a three‑level smart healthcare architecture, and demonstrates its validity with a template use‑case. The architecture is service‑oriented, extends prior group approaches, and integrates a role model, layered cloud computing, and fog‑computing to support healthcare and elderly‑care applications. Integrating these paradigms improves quality of service, governance, data privacy, and compliance, as confirmed by expert interviews and a use‑case demonstration. © 2015 IFSA Publishing, S.

Abstract

In this article we argue that smart items and cloud computing can be powerful enablers of servitization as business trend. This is exemplified by an application scenario in healthcare that was developed in the context of the OpSIT-Project in Germany. We present a three-level architecture for a smart healthcare infrastructure. The approach is based on a service-oriented architecture and extends established architectural approaches developed previously at our group. More specifically, it integrates a role model, a layered cloud computing architecture, as well as a fog-computing-informed paradigm in order to provide a viable architecture for healthcare and elderly-care applications. The integration of established paradigms is beneficial with respect to providing adequate quality of service and governance (e.g., data privacy and compliance). It has been verified by expert interviews with healthcare specialists and IT professionals. To further demonstrate the validity of this architectural model, we provide an example use-case as a template for any kind of smart sensor-based healthcare infrastructure. Copyright © 2015 IFSA Publishing, S. L.