New Perspectives on Sustainable Healthcare Delivery Through Web of Things

Abstract

This chapter focuses on examining the adoption of the web of things paradigm in healthcare in order to facilitate the development of new web-based systems in more effective and efficient ways. Nowadays, the increasing number of personal health sensors and medical devices present the opportunity for healthcare providers to interact with patients in entirely new ways. In this context, the WoT paradigm could be closely linked to patient care and has the potential to generate changes in healthcare. WoT could also be applied in the social and insurance fields, etc. The social web of things (SWoT) further extends WoT in order to facilitate continued interaction between physical devices and humans, allowing the integration of smart objects with social networks. Although it opens new social possibilities, it was less applied in the delivery of healthcare. Nevertheless, its successful adoption depends on overcoming some open challenges.