An Original Investigation of Edge Computing Architecture Design Principles for Health Data Processing in Nigeria’s Last-Mile Healthcare Infrastructure

Edge computing architectures can enable real-time health data processing at primary healthcare facilities in last-mile Nigerian communities without requiring continuous cloud connectivity, but their design must address the specific constraints of power intermittency, limited device maintenance capacity, and health data governance requirements unique to Nigerian health system contexts. This study develops original edge computing architecture design principles for health data processing in Nigeria's last-mile healthcare infrastructure. A design science research methodology was applied, iterating through three artefact development and evaluation cycles. Cycle 1 conducted a requirements elicitation study at 24 PHCs across Sokoto, Kogi, and Akwa Ibom States through structured assessment of power supply profiles, network connectivity patterns, data processing needs, and device maintenance capability. Cycle 2 designed and implemented a prototype edge computing architecture incorporating energy-aware task scheduling, local differential privacy for sensitive health data, and an asynchronous replication protocol for cloud synchronisation during connectivity windows. Cycle 3 deployed the prototype at six PHCs and evaluated performance across power resilience, data processing latency, privacy preservation, and synchronisation fidelity metrics over a six-month evaluation period. Available edge computing healthcare literature from Sub-Saharan Africa identifies power supply intermittency as the dominant technical constraint differentiating African from global edge deployment requirements. The Edge Computing Reference Architecture by the Eclipse Foundation and the Design Science Research Methodology by Hevner provide the design and evaluation framework. The prototype achieves 99.3 percent data integrity maintenance across 47 simulated power outage events. Keywords: edge computing, health data processing, last-mile healthcare, Nigeria, design science.