Fog Computing for Personal Health Principles

Abstract

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments rely on ambient sensing and environment control to enable elderly people to continue to live in their preferred environments. Unlike smart homes where the target audience is usually a family unit, AAL goal is to be able to interact with care receivers and care providers. This provides possibility in case of home based AAL, the care recipient not to be under constant monitoring by the care providers which reduces care costs and increases care efficiency. Cloud paradigm and fog computing fits well for this scenario as data from homes can be aggregated and analyzed in a centralized location. An interface for the care providers can be provided from the cloud using web and mobile devices. In this article, we describe principles for AAL based on fog computing. The edge nodes process and detect local activities of daily living (ADL) events, and have direct control of the local environment. The fog nodes further process and transmit data. The cloud is used for data computation that requires greater resources.