mHealth: Challenges and impact on new forms of healthcare

Technologies enabling pervasive sensing and analysis within the healthcare sector are fast increasing. Especially the usage of mobile devices enables the development of new therapy concepts and business models to ensure patient centered treatment. Within this paper we'll give an overview of mHealth, its definition and challenges to ensure high quality treatment. Later on, a state of the art discussion about challenges will focus on medical apps as medical device and the pervasiveness of data sensing and analysis resulting in information overload. The paper will contribute by discussing the regulatory situation for medical devices regarding apps within the European Union and analogies to the United States. Furthermore we'll show perspectives to fulfill data processing along users demand. At last the paper will show case study results of the Obesity Companion, beHealthy, iHerz and the iNephro project gathered by scientist of the University Hospital Essen, Gelderland Clinic and Fraunhofer ISST.