Telemedicine in the Cloud Era: Prospects and Challenges

The combination of cloud computing and telemedicine introduces new opportunities for transforming healthcare delivery in a more effective and sustainable manner. A number of telemedicine applications have been investigated and developed on the cloud, such as telemonitoring and teleconsultation, all of which fully demonstrate the potential of telemedicine in promoting more affordable and higher quality healthcare through the adoption of emerging cloud and mobile technologies. The need to deploy cloud-based telemedicine has also presented numerous challenges, including how to achieve high assurance, interoperability, security and privacy, and storage adaptability. This article discusses these challenges and several open research issues, with the goal of inspiring research and development in this rising area.