Cloud Computing for Mobile Health: Opportunities and Challenges

Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is a new paradigm for mHealth applications. It has the potential to leverage mobile platforms limitations, improve capacity, reliability, and accessibility of mHealth services, benefit mHealth research, and change the face of healthcare information technology. However, as with any innovation, the integration of cloud computing with mobile computing should be evaluated before its widespread adoption. The aim of this paper is to explore the main limitations of mobile platforms, and identify the opportunities and challenges of MCC. This paper discusses the concept of MCC and its current state in mHealth, and evaluates the opportunities and challenges of this computing paradigm from various aspects including contextual, technical, technological, management, security, and quality aspects.