Enhance Network Communications in a Cloud-based Real-time Health Analytics Platform Using SDN

Transferring collected physiological data from health facilities to a cloud-based health analytical platform can be seen as an efficient and cost effective approach to provide clinical support to rural and remote healthcare centres from urban based specialists. A cloud-based healthcare platform will reduce the requirement of patient transfer due to lack of clinical experts or providing consultative support through the phone. However transferring physiological data streams through a data path with insufficient quality and unsatisfactory conditions may have negative performance impact on real-time data processing. To address this issue, we study the benefit of using software-defined networking (SDN) technology. SDN as an emerging networking paradigm, can be employed to manage and control network conditions and apply desired policies. This research introduces the significant features in SDN technology to transfer physiological data streams through an alternative path with a better quality rather than the congested predetermined shortest path in order to enhance data transfer reliability and improve real-time data processing quality.