What is Things

Any delay introduced in healthcare applications could critically affect the health of patients. Edge computing paradigm has been introduced recently as an alternative to develop such applications, where a rapid response is necessary to ensure the immediate assistance of patients when they need help. In this chapter, the authors propose an edge-of-things computing-based architecture, which illustrates the benefits of the realization of IoT under edge computing approach. The proposed architecture offers significant advantages: 1) it reduces the latency time in the data transmission for processing and analysis; 2) it improves the response time of the delivery of notifications or emergency alerts; 3) it provides real-time processing and big data analysis in the proximity of data sources; 4) it enables interoperability between heterogeneous devices; and 5) it provides security and QoS in the data transmission. The usefulness and relevance of the proposed architecture is evaluated through the implementation of a smart healthcare system applied to a medical case study.