This paper presents the state of the art from the available literature on mobile health care. The study was performed by means of a systematic review, a way of assessing and interpreting all available research on a particular topic in a given area, using a reliable and rigorous method. From an initial amount of 1,482 papers, we extracted and analysed data via a full reading of 40 (2.69%) of the papers that matched our selection criteria. Our analysis since 2010 show current development in 10 application areas and present ongoing trends and technical challenges on the subject. The application areas include patient monitoring, infrastructure, software architecture, modelling, framework, security, notifications, multimedia, mobile cloud computing, and literature reviews on the topic. The most relevant challenges include the low battery life of devices, multiplatform development, data transmission and security. Our study consolidates recent findings in the field and serves as a resourceful guide for future research planning and development.