Integrating Heterogeneous Devices in Support of Local Mobility

With the increasing adoption of handheld computers and their integration in our daily life, mobile computing is becoming an important component of existing computing environments. The new forms of interaction made possible by mobile computing pose new challenges for the design of pervasive computing environments aimed at seamlessly integrating heterogeneous devices. Among these devices, handheld computers provide mobile users access to information and awareness of opportunities for collaboration based on the context of the task at hand. Hospitals are working environments where information is distributed, workers are mobile and artifacts are used for coordination, which makes them convenient settings for the deployment of mobile and pervasive computing technology. Based on workplace studies conducted in a hospital, we designed and implemented a mobile collaborative system aimed at supporting opportunistic and distributed collaboration addressing issues of local mobility and allowing the seamless transfer of information among heterogeneous devices.