The Role and Prospects of IoT and Cloud Computing in Remote Health Monitoring

Cloud computing emerges as the key platform for IoT data storage, processing and analytics due to its simplicity, scalability and affordability (i.e. no up-front investment, low operation costs). Remote patient monitoring in particular can benefit from for this technology in many ways: (a) the new solution is acceptable by many user categories and provides invaluable assistance to chronic patients and the elderly, (b) it is expected to increase users autonomy and confidence and enable self-managing of their condition with the help of caregivers remotely, (c) it reduces the need for face-to-face appointments with doctors and days in hospital. This work reviews key challenges for reliable and secure remote health monitoring based on experience and lessons learned from applying the above technology to the problem of real-time data collection using both wide-range and short-rage wireless protocols and health sensors.