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.