ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Health telematics is becoming a major source of improvement in patients’ lives, especially for disabled, elderly, and chronically ill people. Information and communication technologies have rapidly grown along with the mobile Internet concept of anywhere and anytime connection. In this context, mobile health (m-health) proposes health care services delivery, overcoming geographical, temporal, and even organizational barriers. Pervasive and m-health services aim to respond to several emerging problems in health services, including the increasing number of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, high costs in existing national health services, the need to empower patients and families to self-care and manage their own health care, and the need to provide direct access to health services, regardless of the time and place. This chapter presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art on pervasive and m-health applications. It presents the most important and significant work in the related literature and presents the top and most used m-health applications in the mobile market. New trends and insights for future research studies and new answers to emerging and challenging health care issues are also presented.
