ABSTRACT
The first opportunities for medical care to be delivered to remote locations came with the inventions made to enhance human communication, such as the telegraph, the radio, and the telephone and were referred to as telemedicine. Today, the rapid growth of the Internet has enabled new opportunities for remote delivery of healthcare services to emerge. The first result was the appearance of the e-health concept, and this was quickly followed by m-health, which signalled the extensive use of mobile technologies for medical and health-related purposes. Analogous with the development of web technologies, the consecutive phases of Internet use for systems related to healthcare were called Health 1.0, Health 2.0, Health 3.0, and latterly, Health 4.0. However, the term Health 4.0 or Healthcare 4.0 has recently gained a broader meaning by being considered parallel to Industry 4.0 or the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Undoubtedly, the benefits for healthcare arising from the pillar technologies of Industry 4.0, including cyber-physical systems, Internet-of-Things, cloud computing, and Big Data analytics, can hardly be overestimated. Additionally, it appears that the opportunities for healthcare resulting from Industry 4.0 go far beyond the delivery of a more versatile service. The expectations delineate visions of smart and omnipresent healthcare solutions offering supporting environments for patients and citizens with intelligent tools enabling those involved to take the appropriate decisions.
