Mobile and ubiquitous architecture for the medical control of chronic diseases through the use of intelligent devices: Using the architecture for patients with diabetes

•We define an application to allow the patient monitoring.•We offer a solution that will help the improvement of life for patients.•We design ontologies to enable obtaining the knowledge of the field of study.•We define patterns for the generation of applications.•Defining layers we facilitate the development and maintenance.

This manuscript presents a mobile monitoring application to allow a patient to monitor a chronic disease using mobile devices. This application is developed according to three components that enable the semi-automatic development of software, independent of the target disease and adaptable to the particular user needs. First, we present ontologies that classify medical elements such as diseases, recommendations, preventions, foods, mobile devices and diet suggestions. The second element is the distribution of the devices in layers, allowing the generation of final applications distributed in a medical context. These layers are defined to develop and maintain the set of applications. The third and most important element is developing patterns known as MobiPatterns. A MobiPattern defines the schema of each control module that is a part of the final application. These elements include formal models that seek to uncover fundamental principles and essential features and algorithms, which need to be revisited in the context provided by mobility. Aspects of the application such as the functionality, user interface, and response time for a group of patients have been evaluated in a final application targeting patients with diabetes. The design focuses on simplicity, extensibility, scalability, heterogeneity, and application customization.