Advances in Next-Generation Networking Technologies for Smart Healthcare
The seven articles in this special section examine how 5G mobile communications will impact the smart healthcare industry. With the advancement of 5G communications, smart or "connected" healthcare is getting tremendous attention from academia, governments, industry, and the healthcare community. This will include, for example, 5G wireless networks, mobile edge computing (MEC), software-defined networking (SDN), and cloud radio access networks (C-RANs) can play a significant role in smart healthcare by offering better insight of heterogeneous healthcare media content to support aff ordable and high-quality patient care. While researchers have been making advances in the study of next-generation networking and healthcare services individually, very little attention has been given to make cost-effective and aff ordable smart healthcare solutions. Connected or smart healthcare has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our society.