The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm is drastically changing our world by
making everyday objects an integral part of the Internet. This transformation
is increasingly being adopted in the healthcare sector, where Smart Hospitals
are now relying on IoT technologies to track staff, patients, devices, and
equipment, both within a hospital and beyond. This paradigm opens the door to
new innovations for creating novel types of interactions among objects,
services, and people in smarter ways to enhance the quality of patient services
and the efficient utilisation of resources. However, the realisation of
real-time IoT applications in healthcare and, ultimately, the development of
Smart Hospitals are constrained by their current Cloud-based computing
environment. Edge computing emerged as a new computing model that harnesses
edge-based resources alongside Clouds for real-time IoT applications. It helps
to capitalise on the potential economic impact of the IoT paradigm of 11trillionperyear,withatrillionIoTdevicesdeployedby2025tosense,manageandmonitorthehospitalsystemsinreal−time.ThisvisionpaperproposesnewalgorithmsandsoftwaresystemstotackleimportantchallengesinEdgecomputing−enabledSmartHospitals,includinghowtomanageandexecutediversereal−timeIoTapplicationsandhowtomeettheirdiverseandstrictQualityofService(QoS)requirementsinhospitalsettings.Thevisionweoutlinecanhelptackletimelychallengesthathospitalsincreasinglyface.
