Hybrid cloud/fog environment for healthcare: an exploratory study, opportunities, challenges, and future prospects

The healthcare system has been on the frontline in recent years, and new technologies have greatly benefited healthcare. Researchers have tried to find solutions to different problems associated with the healthcare system by applied various modern technologies approaches. Among the various technologies, are fog and computing used in smart healthcare systems. These applications with the Internet of things (IoT) recently have help in dispersed patient data globally and have advanced healthcare systems. Hence, various applications and solutions using cloud computing have been proposed by researchers to manage healthcare statistics. However, the issues of latency, context-awareness, and a huge volume of data are remaining challenges in cloud computing. Hence, the possibility of transmission errors and the probability of delay in data processing remain a problem as healthcare datasets become more complex and larger. The most alternative solution to those challenges is fog computing in reducing data management complexity in the healthcare system, thus increasing reliability. But, before using fog computing, it is very essential to look into its associated challenges in other to manage healthcare data effectively. Therefore, this chapter discusses the areas of applicability in healthcare systems of hybrid cloud/fog computing. The several extraordinary opportunities brought by the technologies in the healthcare system with research challenges in deployment are discussed. The applications of fog in IoT-based devices bring healthcare components in a distant cloud operating nearer to data sources and the end-users, thus, resulting in context-awareness and lower latency.