Middleware for Healthcare Systems: A Systematic Mapping.

The improvement of technological applications focused on the health context is growing. Different types of applications, such as Health Information Systems (HIS), Electronic Health Records (EHR), and e-Health and m-Health applications, are being developed. With the increasing use of technological solutions in this context, there is a need to integrate the data collected, stored, and processed in these systems. However, the heterogeneity of the data is a factor that makes this integration difficult. To mitigate this problem, middleware appears as an option. This paper aims to understand the current state and future trends of middleware for healthcare applications. To do so, we carried out systematic mapping of the literature on middleware for healthcare systems. This Systematic Mapping initially collected 1162 works, which after the execution of its stages, 34 works were selected for careful reading and, as a result, we present answers to the defined research questions, collected from a careful reading of the selected works. Finally, we concluded that, although there are several middleware solutions in the literature, there is no standard among these solutions, and they end up being limited to solving the problem in a specific context in the health area.