Technology for Predictive Health Monitoring of Elderly and Vulnerable Citizens in Kenya using Healthcare 4.0: A Theoretical Review

he traditional critical healthcare planning is based on periodic routine checks and a reactivestrategy of interventions whenever the individuals have entered high risk states (such as heart attacks orstrokes). The Healthcare 4.0 design is based on the principle of continuous predictive health monitoring suchthat the buildup process towards high risk states of individuals can be identified much before their criticallevels thus ensuring proactive interventions by the hospitals. Kenya has significant potential to adoptHealthcare 4.0 technology using traditional information and networking components. This researchinvestigates how Healthcare 4.0 can be used in predictive health monitoring of the elderly and vulnerablecitizens that individual hospitals can adopt for operational excellence. Desktop review methodology was used.The technical literature review was used to define an operations algorithm. The results suggest that severalcustomizations are needed in the traditional information and networking components to make them fit forpredictive health monitoring. The individuals under critical monitoring should not be allowed high mobilityas it has a negative effect on monitoring reliability and effectiveness. Healthcare 4.0 adoption in Kenya isfeasible. Its operational details need to be defined with several tiers of customized solutions for differentpatient classes. There are some limitations found in this research, which should be kept in mind whiledesigning and operating Healthcare 4.0 networks in Kenya.