IOSR Journal of Mobile Computing & Application (IOSR-JMCA) e-ISSN: 2394-0050, P-ISSN: 2394-0042.Volume 3, Issue 1. (Jan. - Feb. 2016), PP 09-14 www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/0050-0310914 www.iosrjournals.org 9 | Page Cloud Computing for Mobile Health: Opportunities and Challenges Marwan El-Wajeeh 1 , Prof. Galal H. Galal-Edeen 2 , Dr. Hoda Mokhtar 3 1, 2, 3 (Department of Information Systems, Faculty of Computers and Information / Cairo University , Egypt) Abstract: 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. Keywords: Cloud Computing; Mobile Computing; Mobile Cloud Computing; Mobile Health. I. Introduction The use of mobile phones has increased dramatically in recent years. The International Communication Union [1] indicated that there were approximately 7 billion mobile subscriptions of the end of 2014. At the same time, the consumers and enterprises market for cloud-based mobile applications rose to $9.5 billion by the end of 2014 according to a study from Juniper Research [2]. Another report conducted by ABI Research [3] showed that “By the 2015, more than 240 million business customers will be leveraging cloud computing services out of mobile devices, for revenues of $5.2 billion.” These indicators highlight the importance of cloud computing for mobile applications where smart phones are now considered the main platform to overtake the role of PCs. The pervasive and ubiquitous access to healthcare data becomes essential for proper diagnosis and treatment. Establishing mHealth records (MHRs) systems will offer a wide range of advantages such as providing accurate, up-to-date, complete information about patients at the point of care. Moreover, it will enable healthcare professionals to access the patients‟ medical records easily and quickly, and provide an interaction and communication platform between patients and health professionals[4]. Mobile health offers hospitals and healthcare organizations a variety of on-demand services on clouds rather than standalone applications on local servers. Thus, it is clear that mobile health systems have a diverse spectrum of stakeholders with different needs. Hence, establishing MHRs systems on a national level requires a user‟s acceptance. Despite its importance, the adoption of the use of mHealth applications still faces challenges and barriers at the cultural, technological, social, organizational, and political levels, especially in developing countries [5]. Moreover, developing mHealth infrastructure for information and communication is very hard from the technical perspective [6], because infrastructure needs are huge and it is very difficult to offer quick and easy access in general data centers. Mobile devices are facing several challenges in terms of their resource requirements [7], which poses problems in promoting mHealth applications. Most mHealth applications require extensive processing and storage capacity (e.g. image and video storage and processing, and storage of patients records), all these computational and storage capacities restrict the developers in building health applications for mobile phones.