Combining IoT architectures in next generation healthcare computing systems

Abstract The aim of this chapter focuses on featuring firmed IoT architecture paradigms and advocating, knowingly in concrete use cases, the combined use of such architecture categories. It is common knowledge that the growing demand for embedded processing, interconnection, and integration facilities in everyday objects is being driven by a multitude of IoT projects. The smart cities, smart agriculture, manufacturing, and industrial automation areas are some of the most important application grounds. Equally important is the medical sector where specially framed in this publication, the personal home healthcare scenarios gain enormous relevance due to the potential of IoT technology application. It is also becoming clear that the IoT-trending efforts are compelling researchers into the concurrent combination of multiple IoT-computing architecture types or paradigms, to know: wide-range cloud-computing architectures, local-spread fog-computing architectures, and spottily scattered edge-computing architectures. This chapter focuses on identifying the major goals and benefits of each of these architectures classes; describing the relevant state of the art projects, which apply such architecture categories in home healthcare settings; and finally, pinpointing our own experience with home e-health demonstrative use case scenarios, where the benefits of using each of these architecture types become evident, and the concurrent combination of such IoT architectures inevitable.