  Objectives: The article provides an overview of current trends in personal
sensor, signal and imaging informatics, that are based on emerging mobile
computing and communications technologies enclosed in a smartphone and enabling
the provision of personal, pervasive health informatics services.
  Methods: The article reviews examples of these trends from the PubMed and
Google scholar literature search engines, which, by no means claim to be
complete, as the field is evolving and some recent advances may not be
documented yet.
  Results: There exist critical technological advances in the surveyed
smartphone technologies, employed in provision and improvement of diagnosis,
acute and chronic treatment and rehabilitation health services, as well as in
education and training of healthcare practitioners. However, the most emerging
trend relates to a routine application of these technologies in a
prevention/wellness sector, helping its users in self-care to stay healthy.
  Conclusions: Smartphone-based personal health informatics services exist, but
still have a long way to go to become an everyday, personalized
healthcare-provisioning tool in the medical field and in a clinical practice.
Key main challenge for their widespread adoption involve lack of user
acceptance striving from variable credibility and reliability of applications
and solutions as they a) lack evidence-based approach; b) have low levels of
medical professional involvement in their design and content; c) are provided
in an unreliable way, influencing negatively its usability; and, in some cases,
d) being industry-driven, hence exposing bias in information provided, for
example towards particular types of treatment or intervention procedures.
