Fog Computing in Healthcare–A Review and Discussion

Fog computing is an architectural style in which network components between devices and the cloud execute application-specific logic. We present the first review on fog computing within healthcare informatics, and explore, classify, and discuss different application use cases presented in the literature. For that, we categorize applications into use case classes and list an inventory of application-specific tasks that can be handled by fog computing. We discuss on which level of the network such fog computing tasks can be executed, and provide tradeoffs with respect to requirements relevant to healthcare. Our review indicates that: 1) there is a significant number of computing tasks in healthcare that require or can benefit from fog computing principles; 2) processing on higher network tiers is required due to constraints in wireless devices and the need to aggregate data; and 3) privacy concerns and dependability prevent computation tasks to be completely moved to the cloud. These findings substantiate the need for a coherent approach toward fog computing in healthcare, for which we present a list of recommended research and development actions.