Using Game Theory to Characterize Trade-Offs Between Cloud Providers and Service Providers for Health Monitoring Services

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider a 5G network, where service providers offer health monitoring services, by making use of a wearable devices, which are placed on the customers such that they are able to collect personal data for each customer, by monitoring selected health indicators, e.g. the heart rate. A consideration for this scenario is that the continuous generation of new data makes the complete set of data that needs to be manipulated, such a large amount, that it is impossible to store it locally, but alternatively, it becomes necessary to store this data away from the user and make it accessible through the Internet. This is usually done by using storage on the cloud, which the health-related data can use as storage. The use of the cloud offers the additional advantage for the service provider of the health monitoring service that the data can be easily accessible through the use of the cloud over the Internet. Therefore, we must consider the interaction between the health monitoring service providers and the cloud providers over the handling of the user’s data. In particular, we consider the case where enhanced data protection demands by the user for the particular health service may require the cooperation of the service provider and the cloud provider in advance. Once the agreement is reached that the service provider and the cloud provider prefer to cooperate rather than not for the particular monitoring service, a bargaining scheme is employed to allow them to reach an agreement with regard to their individual revenues.