SPECIAL SECTION ON HEALTHCARE BIG DATA

Received August 16, 2016, accepted September 11, 2016, date of publication September 26, 2016,
date of current version October 15, 2016.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2613278

Mobile Cloud Computing Model and Big Data

Analysis for Healthcare Applications
LO’AI A. TAWALBEH1,2 , (Senior Member, IEEE), RASHID MEHMOOD3 , (Senior Member, IEEE),
ELHADJ BENKHLIFA4 , AND HOUBING SONG5 , (Member, IEEE)
1 Department of Computer Engineering, Jordan University of science and Technology, Irbid 22110, Jordan
2 Department of Computer Engineering, Umm Al-Qura University, Mecca 21955, Saudi Arabia
3 High Performance Computing Centre, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia
4 Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE, U.K.
5 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA

Corresponding author: L. A. Tawalbeh ([email protected])

This work was supported by the Long-Term National Science Technology and Innovation Plan (LT-NSTIP) under Grant 13-ELE2527-10
and in part by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT Mobile devices are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of people’s daily life,
facilitating to perform a variety of useful tasks. Mobile cloud computing integrates mobile and cloud
computing to expand their capabilities and benefits and overcomes their limitations, such as limited memory,
CPU power, and battery life. Big data analytics technologies enable extracting value from data having four
Vs: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. This paper discusses networked healthcare and the role of mobile
cloud computing and big data analytics in its enablement. The motivation and development of networked
healthcare applications and systems is presented along with the adoption of cloud computing in healthcare.
A cloudlet-based mobile cloud-computing infrastructure to be used for healthcare big data applications
is described. The techniques, tools, and applications of big data analytics are reviewed. Conclusions are
drawn concerning the design of networked healthcare systems using big data and mobile cloud-computing
technologies. An outlook on networked healthcare is given.

INDEX TERMS Healthcare systems, big data analytics, mobile cloud computing, cloudlet infrastructure,
health applications.

I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, there have been many advances in information and
communication technologies that have been transforming the
world; the world is increasingly becoming a small neighbor-
hood. Among these technologies are the cloud computing, the
wireless communications (3G/4G/5G), and the competitive
mobile devices industry. The mobile devices can provide
variety of services to facilitate our living style [1]. They are
integrated in our daily routine to help performing variety
of tasks such as location determination, time management,
image processing, booking hotels, selling and buying online, FIGURE 1. Mobility features.
and staying connected with others. Also, there are mobile
applications to help you measure and manage your health locations based on many parameters for easier life such as
through applications for blood pressure, exercises, and weight efficiency, stable and fast internet connection and data privacy
loss [2]. concerns to impose the need to protect the users’ data from
The mobility feature of mobile devices (Figure 1) changed unauthorized disclosure especially over non-secure wireless
the way that people use different technologies all over the channels [3]. All these features of mobile devices and inte-
world. There is no need any more to stay at your office to grating them in our life speed up the transition towards
do your job or daily activities. The users can move to many greener and smarter cities [4].

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 L. A. Tawalbeh et al.: Mobile Cloud Computing Model and Big Data Analysis for Healthcare Applications

is an important issue in mobile devices and sometimes limits

the optimum utilization of these devices, the researchers are
motivated to find optimization methods to reduce the con-
sumed energy by mobile devices in the cloud and mobile
computing environments [11].
Besides all the great benefits of using the mobile cloud
computing, there are still some limitations such as the delays
encountered when the mobile devices access the cloud ser-
vices from far distance which are mainly due to/from the
mobile devices. It is believed that using the cloudlet concept
between the enterprise cloud and the mobile device has a
good impact in reducing connection latencies and power
consumption [12].
On the other side, there are many challenges associated
FIGURE 2. Cloud computing concept.
with storing data on cloud, and mainly is to protect the
privacy of the users’ data from unauthorized access and from
malicious attacks. Also, availability of the owners’ data at any
Another recent technology is cloud computing time request is an issue. The integrity is also a concern in
(see Figure 2) which allows access to the stored information which the data should not be altered or modified by intrud-
from anywhere at any time, and can be used in different ers. Many cryptographic techniques can be used to provide
organizations or by individuals to enhance productivity and solution to these information security concerns [13], [14].
increase performance and reduce the cost and complexity [5]. It is well-known that healthcare applications require large
Cloud computing is defined by NIST as ‘‘a model for amounts of computational and communication resources, and
enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access involve dynamic access to large amounts of data within
to a shared pool of configurable computing resources and outside the heath organization leading to the need for
(e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) networked healthcare [15]. Mobile cloud computing could
that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal provide the necessary computational resources at the right
management effort or service provider interaction’’ [6]. place and right time through cloudlet and fog computing
Moreover, integrating the mobile devices with cloud com- based architectures. Moreover, big data and relevant tech-
puting to utilize the unlimited service provided by the cloud nologies could provide the data management and analytics
through the mobile device results in what is known as Mobile solutions that are necessary to reduce healthcare costs and
Cloud Computing [7]. The Cloud Computing relies on a set improve system and clinical inefficiencies. Big data refers to
of network-connected resources shared to maximize their the emerging technologies that are designed to extract value
utilization resulting in reduced management and capital costs. from data having four Vs characteristics; volume, variety,
Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is set to benefit many sec- velocity and veracity. Big data is set to affect the future
tors including the cloud-healthcare systems. As an example, network traffic and hence the network architectures [15].
MCC healthcare system was built to capture and analyze real See [16] for a survey on big data.
time biomedical signals (such as ECG and Blood pressure) This paper discusses the concept of networked healthcare
from users in different locations. On the mobile device, a per- and its enablement through the mobile cloud computing and
sonalized healthcare application is installed and health data big data analytics technologies. The motivation and devel-
are being synchronized into the healthcare cloud computing opment of networked healthcare applications and systems
service for storage and analysis [8]. is presented along with the adoption of cloud computing in
MCC expands the capabilities and benefits of the mobile healthcare. A cloudlet–based mobile cloud computing infras-
devices, and overcomes their limitations, so the users will not tructure to be used for healthcare big data applications is
be worried about the memory size and required CPU power described. The techniques, tools, and applications of big data
to run intensive tasks that consume considerable amount of analytics are reviewed. Conclusions are drawn concerning the
energy [9] and require extra memory. For example, multi- design of networked healthcare systems using big data and
media applications which are known to be among the most mobile cloud computing technologies.
common applications in today’s mobile devices involve shar- The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
ing and creating images and video files. These applications presents the literature review, and Section III discusses the
require high computing capabilities, big space to be stored, healthcare applications and systems. Section IV presents the
and maybe more security protection [10] which are chal- cloudlet based mobile cloud computing infrastructure for
lenges for mobile devices. Mobile cloud computing resolves healthcare use. Section V presents big data analytics, fol-
these issues by storing the large multimedia file on the cloud, lowed by a review of data analytics tools in Section VI.
and it will be available to the mobile users when requested Section VII concludes the paper and provides an outlook for
resulting in better performance. And since the energy drain networked healthcare.

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II. RELATED WORK studies including those implemented on cloud computing

There are many related work in the literature about cloud and platforms.
mobile cloud computing and their useful applications in many Healthcare, like many other sectors, has grown rapidly
life aspects including health and financial transactions. Not with the massive growth in ICT. The increasing role and
neglecting the important issue of securing users sensitive data benefits of ICT in healthcare are becoming visible in the
on the cloud, a secure framework for cloud computing based health informatics, bioengineering and Healthcare Informa-
on data classification is proposed in [17]. This framework tion Systems (HIS). We can now imagine a near future
categorizes the data based on its confidentiality, and selects where healthcare providers can port powerful analytics and
the suitable encryption mechanism to provide the appropriate decision support tools to mobile computing devices aiding
protection for each data category. clinicians at the point of care helping them with synthesis
The authors in [18] presented a prototype implementation of data from multiple sources, and context-aware decision
of cloudlet architecture. They pointed out the advantages of making [23]. Major drivers for ICT-based healthcare include
such architecture in real-time applications. In the straight demands for increased access to and quality of healthcare,
forward approach, the cloudlet is fixed near a wireless access rising healthcare costs, system inefficiencies, variations in
points. But in this prototype, a cloudlet can be chosen dynam- quality of care, high prevalence of medical errors, greater
ically from the resources inside the network to manage the public analysis of government spending, ageing population,
running applications on the component model. and the fact that patients and the public want a greater say
In [19], a large scale Cloudlet MCC model was deployed in decisions about their health and healthcare. The scientific
for the purpose of reducing network delay and power dis- developments that are yet to reach their required potential for
sipation especially for intensive jobs such as multimedia providing personalized healthcare include genetic and molec-
applications. Also, the large scale deployment covering large ular research, translation of knowledge into clinical practice,
areas allows the mobile users to stay connected with the cloud new processes and relationships in product development and
services remotely while they are moving within this area with knowledge management [24]. However, we believe that the
less broadband communication needs while satisfying high major hurdles for the healthcare industry in realizing the full
quality service requirements. potential of ICT include the social reasons including privacy
The impact of using cloudlet along with mobile cloud of health data and public trust [25].
computing on some interactive applications (including video The key management strategies that healthcare executives
streaming) was analyzed in [20]. The authors compared the should focus on over the coming years include Collabora-
two models in terms of system throughput and data transfer tion, Open Systems, and Innovation [26]. The key health
delay. Their results indicated that in most cases, the use of the information technologies (HIT), according to them to be
cloudlet-based model outperformed the cloud-based model. deployed over the next decade include Electronic Health
A framework to provide personalized emotion-aware services Record (EHR), Personal Health Record (PHR), and Health
by mobile cloud computing is proposed in [21]. Information Exchange (HIE) systems. They projected that
Energy conservation is a major concern in cloud computing by 2020, 80% of health care provider organizations will
systems with huge number of operating data centers that have implemented EHR systems in the US, and 80% of the
consume large amounts of power. Moreover, the prediction general population will have started using PHR systems in
of how much this consumption will increase depends on the US. A vision of Medical Informatics in 2040 is presented
the dynamic expansion of their infrastructures to meet the in [27]. The authors believe that transformation of healthcare
increasing demand for huge computation and massive com- will be enabled through the implementation of technologies
munication. The authors in [22] proposed resources man- including genomic information systems & bio-repositories
agement and optimization policies in the Cloud such as integrated with EHR systems; nanotechnology, advanced user
using virtualization, VM live migration, and server consoli- interface solutions, e.g. wearable systems, health apps, health
dation. They presented an energy efficient network resources information exchange (HIE) with other industries/sectors
management approach, and proposed a practical multi-level such as pharma and manufacturing, Home-based TeleHealth
Cloud Resource-Network Management (CRNM) algorithm, solutions interconnecting patients with health care providers,
which is implemented in a virtual Cloud environment using and medical robotic devices interfaced to health IT (HIT)
Snooze framework as the Cloud energy efficiency manager. systems.
The results showed saving of more than 70% of power con- The United States Department of Health and Human Ser-
sumption in Cloud data centers compared to other non-power vices [24] envisions personalized health care and gives a
aware algorithms. perspective on how far and how quickly we have come in
treatment strategies of dangerous diseases including cancer,
III. NETWORKED HEALTHCARE: MOTIVATIONS diabetes and heart attacks. In 2014, Apple introduced the
AND STATE-OF-THE-ART mobile health platform HealthKit [28], a cloud API made
This section provides the motivation for networked health- available for iOS 8 [29]. HealthKit benefits by the Apple’s
care followed by a review of literature on the state-of-the- partnership on this enterprise with Mayo Clinic and soft-
art of networked healthcare architectural and performance ware company Epic Systems. The HealthKit API provides

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the users with an interface for accessing and sharing their systems and providers. For example, as exemplified in this
PHRs. The information collected through the Apple Health paper, monitoring of blood pressure and heart rate of a preg-
App could be integrated with, for example, the Epic’s EHR nant woman, and the heart rate/movement of the fetus, is
systems allowing the use of Epic’s software tools. The Apple a vital requirement for managing her health. The sensors
Health app provides a convenient entry point to personal- attached to a patient’s body form a wireless body sensor
ized health services. Apple has also provided information network (WBSN) and provide information related to heart
for developers and extended an invitation to discuss the rate, blood pressure and other health related parameters.
possibilities for interaction of various devices with the sys- A framework for a unified middleware based on Session
tem [30]. The ‘‘S’’ Health app from Samsung for Android Initiation Protocol (SIP) to enable mobile healthcare appli-
platform is also being used by many people on their smart cations over heterogeneous networks is proposed in [35].
phones [31]. These are important milestones in the move Their motivation is the need for anytime anywhere delivery
towards personalized healthcare. We believe that the major of healthcare services that will in turn require operation over
innovations in personalized healthcare will begin when open heterogeneous networks. Their approach is to use the pro-
Source community will start contributing in the healthcare posed unified middleware to isolate applications from mobil-
applications space. ity management and other transport/discovery related tasks.
Having discussed the motivation for networked healthcare, A survey of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for healthcare
we now review literature on the architectural and performance is provided in [36]. An overview of the design issues for
studies in healthcare. healthcare monitoring systems using WSNs is provided along
There have been many studies on performance modeling with a discussion of the benefits of these systems. Several
and analyses of healthcare applications over communication applications and prototypes of WSN healthcare monitoring
networks [15], and distributed systems [32], including cloud systems are reviewed from the literature, as well as challenges
computing systems [15], [33]. A quantitative modeling study and open research problems for the design of these systems.
to demonstrate the potential of computational grids for its use A study of end-to-end network performance within and
in healthcare organizations to deploy diverse medical appli- between three hospitals in the Central-West region of Ontario
cations was presented in [32]. The study considered multiple with the aim to examine the healthcare applications require-
organizational and application scenarios for grid deployment ments was presented in [37]. The OPNET modeler is used to
in networked healthcare including four different classes of study the network performance. Results of four applications
healthcare applications and 3 different types of healthcare used in this study; database, HTTP, FTP, email, were pre-
organizations. The computational requirements of key health- sented and discussed for throughput and queuing delays for
care applications were identified and a Markov model of a servers and the main router. A comparative study on mobile
networked healthcare system was built. For each scenario, computing to get a better solution for mobile healthcare appli-
steady state probability distributions of the respective Markov cations was presented in [38]. A mobile cloud architecture
models were computed in order to analyze the system per- relevant to healthcare applications that stores and manages
formance. Various performance measures of interest such personal healthcare data was proposed. A number of other
as blocking probability and throughput could be computed works have discussed cloud computing adoption in healthcare
from these state probability distributions. The paper provides and the expected advantages and limitations, see e.g. [39].
an interesting insight into computational requirements of In the context of networked healthcare we should men-
healthcare applications, as well as provides a platform to tion the Health Level Seven International standard. HL7 is
explore communication requirements of healthcare applica- a not-for-profit organization that was formed in 1987. It is
tions. These requirements are important because the traffics accredited by ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
on future networks connecting healthcare systems are likely and it is ‘‘dedicated to providing a comprehensive framework
to be dominated by the analytics applications that require fre- and related standards for the exchange, integration, sharing,
quent, low-latency, communications. These individual com- and retrieval of electronic health information that supports
munications though may not be heavy in terms of data, clinical practice and the management, delivery and evaluation
however will create significant traffic due to the large number of health services’’ [40]. ‘‘Level Seven’’ refers to the seventh
of individual communications. This is also very typical of layer (the application layer) of the International Organiza-
high performance computing applications. A healthcare mon- tion for Standardization (ISO) seven-layer communications
itoring system based on wireless sensor networks is proposed model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI).
in [34]. Specifically, the monitoring system monitors phys- Many studies have explored the networked systems and
iological parameters from multiple patient bodies through QoS in transferring data over different networks, which is
a coordinator node attached to the patient’s body that col- very important in many applications especially in healthcare.
lects the signals from the wireless sensors and sends them Service modeling of multimedia over Wi-Fi networks was
to the base station. Continuous monitoring of physiological explored in [41]. End to end Service Modeling of multimedia
parameters is an important application area of healthcare and (video, voice and text) over VoIP networks within metropoli-
has major implication on the design of network that con- tan area network environments was explored in [42] with
nects sensors, analysis applications, physicians, healthcare a focus on VoIP. The study also presented a novel analysis

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methodology combining simulations and Markov modeling.

A scalable multimedia QoS architecture for ad hoc networks
was proposed in [43]. Cross-Layer QoS and provisioning for
multimedia applications (video, voice and text) over wireless
Ad hoc Networks was reported in [44]. Classification of ad-
hoc networks design, infrastructure, and QoS for multimedia
communications over wireless networks was reported in [45].
An important trend to enable next generation networked
healthcare systems would be the networking and integra-
tion of healthcare and other smart city systems, particularly
for healthcare related operations, such as integration with
transportation [46]–[49] and logistics systems [50], [51]. For
instance, in [50] electronic health records (EHRs) and other
smart city information systems are used together for capac-
ity sharing and to provide enhanced efficiencies. Networked
healthcare systems will eventually be designed as sustainable FIGURE 4. The cloudlet concept.

enterprise systems which will be part of networked smart

city information and operations systems [52], [53]. Model- and the mobile device has a good chance to overcome the
ing methods that leverage high performance computing and challenges associated with MCC such as latencies and power
are able to deal with big data, such as [47] and [49], will consumption [55].
be required in studying such complex networked healthcare But, in some cases, the mobile user has no choice other than
systems. connecting directly to the EC. This happens when the mobile
device needs to update files stored in the Enterprise Cloud or
IV. MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE request certain services that are not available in the Cloudlet.
FOR HEALTH CARE BIG DATA Motivated by the cloudlet concept, the authors in [56] built
There are many mobile cloud computing infrastructures a mobile cloud system to be used in different applications
for different usages including the healthcare applications. such as universities. Their system use different sensors to
The traditional infrastructures involve set of cloud resources carry out many tasks. They proposed and implemented two
accessed remotely by the users of different types of devices main applications in traffic management and fire detection
via through the Internet as shown in Figure 3. and the data from sensors is processed in mobile cloud sys-
tem. In the same context, the researcher in [57] introduced
an efficient cloudlet MCC model in which the mobile users
communicate directly to the cloudlet instead of the enterprise
cloud. Their model can be applied in many environments
including hospitals were big amounts of data need to be saved
and processed.
The Big Data is a recent term associated with the huge
amounts of stored /obtained data due to the revolutionary
advances in different technologies including: cloud com-
puting, spread of social media, and wireless communica-
tion technologies. It is defined according to: the size of
data (volume), types of data based on the producing source
FIGURE 3. Mobile cloud computing traditional infrastructure. (variety), and the time frequency to generate the data
(velocity); every, minute, day, month, or a decade [58]. Some
The massive spread of mobile applications in all and every of this big amount of data could be processed offline, but
area of the peoples life resulted in huge amounts of data some applications needs real time processing for this data
that need to be processed and analyzed efficiently in less such as health applications where the data analysis and
time and power complexity which imposes the need for new extracting the right decisions makes a difference between
competitive MCC models other than the traditional one. patients life and death. Figure 5 shows Mobile cloud comput-
Performance Enhancement Framework using the Cloudlet ing for healthcare big data applications. In this MCC model
was proposed in [54]. The cloudlet (figure 4) can be consid- the cloudlets are placed nearby the hospital and cover an area
ered as a closer cloud with many advantages and capabilities that can be accessed by authorized people who can access
to avoid several limitations of distant cloud. And so, a limited the patients’ information and follow their status remotely.
resources cloudlet will not help, and might have bad impact Moreover, in this model, there is big amount of patients data
on the performance. So, it is believed that the cloudlet scheme being generated and need to be analyzed, and the next section
which is introduced as a middle stage between the cloud discusses the data analytics.

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attractive user interface and provide an easy to use data entry

models and support interactivity for what-if analysis. The
drawback of spread sheets and other common client appli-
cations e.g., Excel is that they do not support computation of
large scale data analytics and exploration. Researchers in the
area of social sciences to environmental sciences are facing
a flood of data and they often sit in spread sheets or other
client application with the lack of easy methods to explore the
FIGURE 5. Healthcare big data in MCC.
data, or invoke scalable analytical models over the data or find
related data sets. Developers developed a Cloud data analytics
V. DATA ANLAYTICS service which is based on Daytona. Daytona is an interac-
The science of examining raw data with the purpose of tive MapReduce [61] runtime optimized for data analytics.
drawing conclusion or inspecting, cleaning, modeling and In their model, Excel and other client application provide
transforming data with the purpose of highlighting useful the data entry and other interaction interface to the user, and
information is called data analytics [59]. This method is being bridges the gap between the client and Cloud, user can use this
used in many industries to allow manager to take best business service to discover and import data from the Cloud, invoke
decisions and verify or disprove existing theories and models. Cloud scale data analytics algorithms to extract information
This science is different from data mining by the purpose, from big datasets, invoke data visualization and then store
scope and focus of analysis, in data mining, miners sort data back to the Cloud with the help of spreadsheet or any
through huge data sets with the help of sophisticated software other client application to whom user is already familiar. This
to identify hidden relationships and undiscovered patterns. development is the ramp between any client application such
While data analytics focuses on the conclusion reached on as Excel and a new class of data analytics algorithms that
the basis of evidence and reasoning, the method of deriv- are being implemented on Cloud. User only need to select
ing a result based solely on what is already known by the an analytics algorithms from the Excel research ribbon with
researcher. Recently Big Data and Big Data Analytics are having concern for how to start up virtual machines in the
being used to explain data sets and analytical methods in Cloud or how to scale out the execution of selected algorithms
to the application which are very large, for example, TB to in the Cloud.
exabytes and complex from sensor to social media data which
require advanced and unique data management, storage, visu- VI. TOOLS FOR DATA ANALYSIS
alization and analysis technologies. See e.g. [60]. There are different tools available for data visualization and
Data analytics science is divided into exploratory data anal- analysis [62], for example, (i) DataWrangler is web based
ysis (EDA), confirmatory data analysis (CDA) and qualitative service from Stanford University’s Visualization Group and
data analysis (QDA). In EDA new features in the data are dis- is designed for cleaning and rearranging data. (ii) Google
covered, in CDA existing hypotheses are proven true or false Refine is explained as spreadsheet on steroids for taking a first
and QDA is being used in social sciences to draw conclusion look at numerical and text data, it can import and export data
from non-numerical data for example, photographs, videos in different formats which includes tab and comma separate
or words. In IT sector data analytics has special meaning in text files and XML, Excel and JSON files. (iii) The R Project
the context of IT audits where an organization’s information for statistical computing is a general statistical analysis plat-
system, processes and operations are examined. Data analysis form which runs on command line. It also graphs, charts
is also being used to get the information about data protec- and plot results. This is open source project which signif-
tion, operational efficiency and success in accomplishing an icantly extend functionality. It runs on Linuz, Mac OS X,
organization overall goals. Windows XP or later and Unix. (iv) Google Fusion Tables,
The term ‘analytics’ has been used by business intelli- is one of the simplest way to turn data into chart or map.
gence software vendors as a buzzword to explain different File could be uploaded in several different formats and then
functions [59]. Data analytics is also used to explain, for choose how to display it, for example in form of table, map,
example online analytical processing to customer relation line chart heatmap, bar graph, pie chart, timeline, scatter plot,
management (CRM) analytics in call centers, bank and credit motion or storyline. It also provide option to enable others
cards companies to analyze spending and withdrawal patterns to make comments on the data itself. Google Fusion Tables
for preventing identity theft or fraud, and ecommerce com- could run on any web browser. (v) Impure, is like Yahoo Pipes
panies inspect web traffic to analyze which customers are for data visualization and it is designed for creating various
more or less potential. Modern data analytics commonly use types of highly polished graphical representations of data by
information dashboards which are supported by real time data using a drag and drop workspace. This tool provide highly
streams. visual interface for creating visualization, and it run on any
It is argued [61] that spread sheets are the established data web browser.
collection and data analysis tools in technical computing, Another tool, (vi) Tableau Public, can turn data into any
business and academics. Excel is the example that offers number of visualization, for example from simple to complex.

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User can drag and drop files onto the work area and get help map information. It works with OpenStreetMap. This is not
from the software for suggesting visualization type and then developed yet but the project page says that it is still under-
customize everything, for example, labels and tool tips to going rapid development.
size, legend display and interactive filters. This tool runs on OpenStreetMap (xviii) is somewhat like Wikipedia of map-
Windows 7, Vista, XP, Server 2008, 2003. (vii) Many Eyes, ping world. It runs on any web browser. (xix) TimeFlow,
is a pioneer in web-based data visualization, IBM’s Many is desktop software is being used for analysing data points
Eyes project combines graphical analysis with community which involve a time component. This software allows to
and encourage user to upload share and discuss information. the use to store and filter information and give get statistical
This tool is easy to use and have well documentation which summaries of the data. It runs on desktop systems running
gives suggestion on when to use what kind of visual data rep- Java 1.6, Windows and Mac OS X. (xx) IBM Word-Cloud
resentation. More than a dozen output options are available Generator, different tools mentioned in previous sections are
for example, graphics and word clouds, treemap, charts, plots able to create word clouds, for example, Many Eyes and
and network diagrams. A free account is required to upload the Google Visualization API, but if the user is looking for
and post data. This tool can run on Java and any modern Web easy desktop software dedicated to the task then IBM’s free
browser which can display Flash. (viii) VIDI, the web site Word Cloud is the an option. It runs on Mac OS X, Windows
of VIDI’s bills this as a tool for Drupal content management and Linux running Java. (xxi) Gephi, is photo shop for data
system. No Drupal is required when graphics created by the and this open source beta project is designed for visualizing
site, visualization wizard can be used on any HTML page. statistical information, for example relationship within the
This tool is easy in use just like Many Eyes which have networks of 50,000 devices, it is used for network analysis.
more mapping options. VIDI can run on any web browser. It runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X running Java 1.6.
(ix) Zoho Reports, this tool can take data from number of file (xxii) NodeXL is Excel plugin and displays network graph
formats or directly from a database and then turn it into tables, from a given list of connection. It help to analyse and see the
charts and pivot tables and other formats which are familiar patterns and relationships in the data. It runs on Excel 2007
to spread sheet users. User can schedule data imports from and 2010 Windows.
source on the web. This tool can run on any web browser. Talend Open Studio for Big Data [63] is an open source
(x) Choosel, this tool is currently under development and is vendor for data analytics it provide all you need to easily
a open source web based framework which is designed for design and implement big data transfer and big data analytics
charts, graphs, clouds, maps and timelines. Choosel can run by using Hadoop technologies [64]. With this feature rich
on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. open source solution user can quickly get to work with big
A tool called Exhibit (xi) is developed for users to eas- data and Hadoop. Talend is one of the largest companies
ily create web pages with advanced text search and filter- with an open source business model. It was founded in 2005
ing functionalities. Users who are comfortable with coding, and it’s the first commercial open source vendor of data
Exhibit offer them number of views for example, charts, integration software. Hadoop is also an open source software
maps, timeplots, and calendars. (xii) Google Chart Tools, framework which supports data intensive distributed applica-
is a full fledge self-contained application for uploading and tions. Map/reduce a computational paradigm is implemented
sorting data, and also generating maps and charts. It runs on by Hadoop, where application is divided into various pieces
any web browser. (xiii) JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit, this is not of work and each of which may be executed or- re executed
among the best known JavaScript visualization libraries but on any node in the cluster. Hadoop is written in Java, it is
White House agrees that it was used to create the Obama a top level Apache project being built and used by a global
administration’s interactive budget graphic. This tool runs community of contributors. It operates on a cross-platform, its
on JavaScript-enabled web browsers. (xiv) Protovis, is a type is distributed file system, and developer of this software
graphical toolkit for turning data into visualization. The best is Apache Software Foundation. It consists of Hadoop Com-
thing about this toolkit is that it is well documented with mon (package) that offers access to the file systems supported
number of examples and sample code, and also this toolkit is by Hadoop, this package contains necessary JAR files and
designed to balance simplicity with control over the display. scripts required to start Hadoop. This package also provide
It runs on JavaScript-enabled web browsers. (xv) Quantum documentation, source code and different projects.
GIS (QGIS), this tool is designed for creating maps that Another open source tool for data analytics is called
offer sophisticated, detailed data base analysis of geographic Weka [65] which is a collection of machine learning algo-
regions. ArcView is an application which cost money but the rithms for data mining. These algorithms cloud be called
open source QGIS is an alternative for ArcView. QGIS runs from a java code or directly applied to a dataset. Weka pro-
on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. (xvi) OpenHeatMap vide tools for data pre-processing, regression, classification,
is user friendly website that generate colour coded maps. clustering, visualization and association rules. Weka has two
Colour will change depending on the underlying information primary versions, (i) the stable version and (ii) development
for example, population or average income change. It runs version. The stable version is the latest edition of data mining
on web browsers enabled for flash or HTML 5 Canvas. book that only receives bug fixes. The development version
(xvii) OpenLayers, is JavaScript library for displaying that receives new features and exhibit package management

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 L. A. Tawalbeh et al.: Mobile Cloud Computing Model and Big Data Analysis for Healthcare Applications

system which makes it easy for the Weka developers to add information and operations systems. Modeling methods that
new methods to Weka. For the latest download of Weka every leverage high performance computing and big data technolo-
night a snapshot of the subversion repository is taken and gies will be required in designing such complex networked
compiled and put together in zip files for download, Weka 3.6 healthcare systems. Further studies are needed on the integra-
is the latest stable version available. Another tool called Rapid tion of mobile cloud computing and healthcare applications
Analytics [66] is open source and is one of most widely used to design realistic networked healthcare systems that are able
data mining and predictive analysis solutions worldwide, it to provide personalized medicine, reduce healthcare costs and
is built around RapidMiner which is a powerful engine for facilitate better clinical and operational processes.
data analytics. It rely on industry standard application servers.
User can remotely schedule execution of analytical processes. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
It also offer web based access to results, reports and processes The authors thank the Science and Technology Unit at
that built on industry standard application and web services. Umm AL-Qura University for their continued logistics
It combines the advantages of RapidMiner with collabora- support.
tive working environment and dedicated computing power.
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LO’AI A. TAWALBEH (SM’–) received the ELHADJ BENKHELIFA is currently an Associate

B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineer- Professor (Reader) with Staffordshire University,
ing from the Jordan University of Science and U.K., and the Faculty Director of the Mobile
Technology (JUST), Jordan, in 2000, and the Fusion Applied Research Center (45 Ph.D. stu-
M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineer- dents and over 15 Staff). During his academic
ing from Oregon State University, USA, in 2002 career, he has built a rich portfolio of successful
and 2004, respectively, under the supervision of national and international collaborations. Over the
Prof. Dr. Cetin K. Koc, with GPA 4.0/4.0 past three years, he successfully secured external
From 2005 to 2012, he was as a part-time funding in excess of U.S. $1.5 million USD. He is
Professor to teach different information security currently the Founding Head of the Cloud Com-
courses in the Master programs with the NewYork Institute of Technology, puting and Applications Research Group, leading a team of ten Ph.D. He is
DePaul University, and Princes Sumaya University for Technology. He is Co-Founding Chair of several conferences/workshops IEEE CCSNA, IEEE
currently a Tenure Associate Professor with the Computer Engineering BDSNA, IEEE SNAMS, IEEE SDS, and IEEE IOTSMS.
Department, JUST, and the Founder and the Director of the Cryptographic
Hardware and Information Security Laboratory, JUST. He has been a Visiting
Professor with the Department of Computer Engineering, Umm Al-Qura
University, Mecca, Saudi Arabia, since 2013.
He has authored over 70 research publications in many refereed interna-
tional journals and conferences. His research interests include information
security, cryptographic applications and computer forensics, cloud security, HOUBING SONG (M’12–SM’14) received the
and mobile cloud computing. He is a Reviewer and a member of the Editorial Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Boards of many international journals. He has won many Research Grants the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA,
and Awards. He is the Chair of many international conferences and work- in 2012.
shops in mobile cloud security and management. In 2012, he joined the Department of Electrical
and Computer Engineering, West Virginia Univer-
sity, Montgomery, WV, USA, where he is currently
an Assistant Professor and the Founding Director
of the Security and Optimization for Networked
RASHID MEHMOOD (SM’–) received quali- Globe Laboratory (SONG Lab). His research inter-
fications and academic work experience from ests lie in the areas of cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things, cloud
the universities in U.K., including Huddersfield, computing, big data, connected vehicle, wireless communications and net-
Swansea, Cambridge, Birmingham, and Oxford. working, and optical communications and networking. His research has
He has almost 20 years of research experience in been supported by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.
computational modeling and simulation systems He was the first recipient of Golden Bear Scholar Award and the highest
coupled with his expertise in high performance faculty research award at WVU.
computing. He is currently the Research Professor He has authored more than 80 academic papers in peer-reviewed inter-
of Big Data Systems and the Director for Research, national journals and conferences. He is a member of ACM. He was the
Training and Consultancy with the High Perfor- General Chair of four international workshops, including the first IEEE Inter-
mance Computing Center, King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. He has national Workshop on Security and Privacy for Internet of Things and Cyber-
authored over 100 research papers including four edited books. His research Physical Systems (Internet of Things/CPS-Security), London, U.K., the
interests include multidisciplinary science and technology to enable better first/second/third IEEE ICCC International Workshop on Internet of Things
quality of life and Smart Economy with a focus on real-time intelligence (Internet of Things 2013/2014/2015), Xi’an/Shanghai/Shenzhen, China, and
and dynamic system management. He is a member of the Future Cities and the Technical Program Committee Chair of the fourth IEEE International
Community Resilience Network. He has organized and chaired international Workshop on Cloud Computing Systems, Networks, and Applications, San
conferences and workshops in his areas of expertise including EuropeComm Diego, USA. He is currently an Associate Editor for several international
2009 and Nets4Cars 2010–2013. He has led and contributed to academia- journals, including IEEE Access, and KSII Transactions on Internet and
industry collaborative Projects funded by EPSRC, EU, U.K., regional Funds, Information Systems, and a Guest Editor of several special issues. He has
and Technology Strategy Board, U.K., with value over e50 million. served on the Technical Program Committee for numerous international
Mr. Mehmood is a member of ACM and OSA, and the former conferences, including ICC, GLOBECOM, INFOCOM, WCNC, and so on.
Vice-Chairman of IET Wales SW Network.

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