title: Mobile healthcare: the opportunities and challenges.
abstract: Mobile healthcare is an important extension of electronic healthcare. It enables the caregivers to have an ubiquitous and uninterrupted access to patients' clinical data and the latest medical knowledge; concurrently, it allows patients with chronic conditions to remain under constant observation without needing to be physically present at the clinic. The critical challenges to a full-scale implementation include establishing interoperability among electronic health records, developing better display technologies and security controls for mobile devices and developing smart algorithms to detect clinically significant events before notifying caregivers. As a consequence of mobile healthcare, new opportunities for physician-patient joint decision-making and personalized healthcare are beginning to take shape. Accompanying them are the challenges of mindset adjustment, the empowerment of patients with medical knowledge in everyday language and ensuring the confidentiality of patient data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiological Sciences, University of California Irvine Medical Center, Orange, CA 92868, USA. yshieh@uci.edu
authors.forename: Yao Y
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Shieh
authors.forename: Fong Y
authors.initials: FY
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.forename: Arash
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Anavim
authors.forename: Mason
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shieh
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chao-Ming C
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D003153:Community Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration; D016494:Computer Security; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000379:methods; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration; D010358:Patient Participation; D014481:United States; D014584:User-Computer Interface