Recent study finds mobile healthcare and medical app downloads look set to triple over the next few years.

A recent study from Juniper Research finds the number of mobile healthcare and medical app downloads is likely to reach 142 million by 2016, up from an expected 44 million in 2012. The study also finds that the number of patients monitored by mobile networks looks set to grow to 3 million by 2016.

Mobile health monitoring certainly seems to make a lot of sense and could be the next “big” thing as we look to more ways to leverage the largely untapped power and potential of the smart phone. The ability to monitor medical conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions on a more regular basis, without necessarily requiring tailored equipment, could be of tremendous benefit and could enable highlighting of serious conditions much earlier in the treatment cycle.

One of the tricky challenges with mobile monitoring will be connecting devices and applications to back-end portals and this is where Qualcomm Life are focusing their efforts through the introduction of the three step 2net Platform which aims to address the areas of data acquisition, data transmission and data storage and access.