Healthcare Systems: An Overview of the Most Important Aspects of Current and Future m-Health Applications

This chapter explores the most relevant aspects in relation to the outcomes and performance of the different components of a healthcare system with a particular focus on mobile healthcare applications. In detail, we discuss the six quality principles to be satisfied by a generic healthcare system and the main international and European projects, which have supported the dissemination of these systems. This diffusion has been encouraged by the application of wireless and mobile technologies, through the so-called m-Health systems. One of the main fields of application of an m-Health system is telemedicine, for which reason we will address an important challenge encountered during the realization of an m-Health application: the analysis of the functionalities that an m-Health app has to provide. To achieve this latter aim, we will present an overview of a generic m-Health application with its main functionalities and components. Among these, the use of a standardized method for the treatment of a massive amount of patient data is necessary in order to integrate all the collected information resulting from the development of a great number of new m-Health devices and applications. Electronic Health Records (EHR), and international standards, like Health Level 7 (HL7) and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), aims at addressing this important issue, in addition to guaranteeing the privacy and security of these health data. Moreover, the insights that can be discerned from an examination of this vast repository of data can open up unparalleled opportunities for public and private sector organizations. Indeed, the development of new tools for the analysis of data, which on occasions may be unstructured, noisy, and unreliable, is now considered a vital requirement for all specialists who are involved in the handling and using of information. These new tools may be based on rule, machine or deep learning, or include question answering, with cognitive computing certainly having a key role to play in the development of future m-Health applications.