Abstract |
The papers in this special section focus on cloud computing, fog computing, the Internet of Things, and Big Data analytics for the future healthcare industry, or Healthcare 4.0. Healthcare Industry 4.0 allows increasing flexibility in production, speeding up both manufacturing and market processes, increasing both the product quality and productivity, and changing business models modifying the interaction with value chain, competitors, and clients. Healthcare Industry 4.0 requires investments and mind-set change for cross-industry collaboration, agreements on data ownership, security, legal issue solving, product registration standards, new machine-to-machine communication protocols, and employment/skills development. Furthermore,Healthcare Industry 4.0 is revolutionizing the market of health service provisioning to patients and clinical operators. |