E-health involves connecting medical devices with broader healthcare infrastructures, linking personal medical devices with healthcare providers such as hospitals, medical researchers, or private companies. Benefits include a streamlined healthcare system, increased efficiency, cost reduction, risk mitigation, improved quality of care and life, and increased transparency in the healthcare system. Despite these advantages, there are structural and technical challenges, given the pervasiveness and criticality of e-health technologies, the impact of adverse outcomes, and the sensitivity of personal health information, requiring higher levels of reliability, security, and protection than typical systems.
E-health applications generally include three levels: a cloud computing and big data infrastructure, internet-connected gateways, and (body) sensors or sensor networks. With the introduction of edge nodes with computational and storage capabilities near medical sensors, the edge computing paradigm can play a crucial role in this context, ensuring requirements such as reliability, analysis speed, and response.