Smart health: A context-aware health paradigm within smart cities

Abstract

The new era of mobile health ushered in by the wide adoption of ubiquitous computing and mobile communications has brought opportunities for governments and companies to rethink their concept of healthcare. Simultaneously, the worldwide urbanization process represents a formidable challenge and attracts attention toward cities that are expected to gather higher populations and provide citizens with services in an efficient and human manner. These two trends have led to the appearance of mobile health and smart cities. In this article we introduce the new concept of smart health, which is the context-aware complement of mobile health within smart cities. We provide an overview of the main fields of knowledge that are involved in the process of building this new concept. Additionally, we discuss the main challenges and opportunities that s-Health would imply and provide a common ground for further research.