A conceptual model for quality of experience management to provide context-aware eHealth services

• Published in: Future generation computer systems Vol. 101; pp. 1041 - 1061
• Main Authors: da Silva, Madalena Pereira, Gonçalves, Alexandre Leopoldo, Dantas, Mário Antônio Ribeiro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2019
• Subjects: AAL; ICT; QoC; QoE; SDN; UX; ICT; QoC; AAL; SDN; QoE
• ISSN: 0167-739X; 1872-7115
• DOI: 10.1016/j.future.2019.07.033

The emergence of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) approach, together with Autonomic Network Management (ANM), have improved the provision of eHealth services. However, proposals must evolve in order to ensure that eHealth data be transported with quality assurance and delivered with quality information. This perspective substantiates our proposal and the respective validation of a Quality of Experience (QoE) Management model in a Future Internet Architecture. A knowledge representation model of QoE was incorporated into a service delivery platform oriented to user’s needs, thus measuring UX (User Experience). An experimental environment was configured to provide eHealth services from an AAL environment to a healthcare facility. Experiments were performed to verify whether the components of the proposed approach had better quality performance in service provision when compared to the components of the native approach of the SDN controller. Experimental results pointed out that, with a 95% confidence interval, all eHealth services utilizing components of the proposed model showed superior quality when compared with those from the native approach. •Proposes a QoE Management model to provide context-aware eHealth services.•Proposes an SDN-based architecture to provide users with QoE-aware services.•Presents challenges in the provision of eHealth services on networks of the Internet of the Future.