Health 4.0: How Virtualization and Big Data are Revolutionizing Healthcare

This book describes how the creation of new digital services—through vertical and horizontal integration of data coming from sensors on top of existing legacy systems—that has already had a major impact on industry is now extending to healthcare. The book describes the fourth industrial revolution (i.e. Health 4.0), which is based on virtualization and service aggregation. It shows how sensors, embedded systems, and cyber-physical systems are fundamentally changing the way industrial processes work, their business models, and how we consume, while also affecting the health and care domains. Chapters describe the technology behind the shift of point of care to point of need and away from hospitals and institutions; how care will be delivered virtually outside hospitals; that services will be tailored to individuals rather than being designed as statistical averages; that data analytics will be used to help patients to manage their chronic conditions with help of smart devices; and that pharmaceuticals will be interactive to help prevent adverse reactions. The topics presented will have an impact on a variety of healthcare stakeholders in a continuously global and hyper-connected world.

·         Presents explanations of emerging topics as they relate to e-health, such as Industry4.0, Precision Medicine, Mobile Health, 5G, Big Data, and Cyber-physical systems;

·         Provides overviews of technologies in addition to possible application scenarios and market conditions;

·         Features comprehensive demographic and statistic coverage of Health 4.0 presented in a graphical manner.

Author Biography

Dr. Christoph Thuemmler, PhD is Professor of eHealth at Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Christoph studied Medicine, Political Science and Educational Sciences at Heidelberg University and State University of New York at Stony Brook New York. After completion of a PhD on cerebral hemodynamics at the department of Neurology at Heidelberg Medical School he underwent specialist training as a General Physician and developed a special interest in Emergency Medicine and Care of the Elderly. He has 20 years of clinical experience. Christoph has been working in the eHealth domain since the late 90ies. He has built an international reputation in the field and served as an expert to the European Commission on the advisory board of the EU-China Round Table on the Internet of Things and is now active in the European advance towards the 5th generation of mobile network technologies (5G). Christoph has a strong interest in the virtualization of care, cyber-physical systems and software to data strategies in distributed architectures in the health domain. His application research is concerned with Individualized Medicine, smart pharmaceuticals, hospital to home strategies and supply chain management. 

Professor Chunxue Bai is known for his pioneering work of a cell phone-based remote monitoring system for lung function and has developed a system for management of chronic airway diseases. He is the author of over 420 publications in prestigious nationally and internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals, and has been invited to write more than 30 chapters in reference books and editorials in journals. Dr Bai has been invited to more than 40 international conferences (ATS, ERS, APSR) and academic institutions throughout the world, to present his results of research for esteemed participants.