Mobile healthcare: Technologies and architectures

While healthcare is now supported by mass-market technologies, exactly how to evolve the infrastructure and applications -particularly for mobile users - is still a topic for research and experimentation. Several companies are making niche market plays - for example, remote vital signs sensing and mobile health advice systems - but these are progressing in so-called "silo-ed" fashion and have other limitations as well. Our position as a major telecom software and consulting agency and commercial/government R&D agency has afforded us deep insight into these issues. This paper describes the tradeoffs of design approaches and goes on to present our visions for mobile technology-supported healthcare. We describe fundamental design philosophies for mobile healthcare, today's technologies that will have the greatest influence, and several of our pilot systems that illustrate the value of systematic platform-based healthcare infrastructure.