Software defined eHealth networking towards a truly mobile and reliable system

Abstract

The eHealth technology will change the way the health system is handled, mainly in developing countries, such as Brazil, where there is a huge shortage of healthcare professionals to assist the patients, especially for those living in rural and remote areas. The Context-Aware Mobile Approach (CAMA) seeks to improve the Brazilian primary healthcare system through context-aware eHealth facilities, such as people mobility, expecting to change the way that healthcare services are applied, managed, and maintained to achieve efficiency and safety for both patients and hospital staffs. Since this type of technology will handle vital parameters of people, it is mandatory that the involved network infrastructure can provide dependability and reliability so it can fulfill their role properly. This paper presents a network infrastructure based on the Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm to enable quality-oriented mobility control capabilities in the CAMA approach, to deploy mobility prediction, Point of Attachment (PoA) decision and handover setup meeting both application quality requirements and current wireless quality conditions, then improving the dependability and reliability of the eHealth biofeedback systems.