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Real-time personal health monitoring is gaining new ground with advances in wireless communications. Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide a means for low-powered sensors, affixed either on the human body or in vivo, to communicate with each other and with external telecommunication networks. The healthcare benefits of WBANs include continuous monitoring of patient vitals, measuring postacute rehabilitation time, and improving quality of medical care provided in medical emergencies. This study sought to examine emerging trends in WBAN adoption in healthcare. To that end, a systematic literature survey was undertaken against the PubMed database. The search criteria focused on peer-reviewed articles that contained the keywords “wireless body area network” and “healthcare” or “wireless body area network” and “health care.” A comprehensive review of these articles was performed to identify adoption dimensions, including underlying technology framework, healthcare subdomain, and applicable lessons-learned. This article benefits healthcare technology professionals by identifying gaps in implementation of current technology and highlighting opportunities for improving products and services. Advances in information and communicationtechnology have made real-time transmissionof biological information a possibility.Through the use of wireless body areanetworks (WBANs), this information can becommunicated from the human body over acommunication network for remote storage.From a healthcare delivery perspective, thishas opened up avenues for efficient monitor-ing by increasing patient mobility while alsofacilitating a geographically agnostic moni-toring facility. From a patient perspective, thebenefits include improved quality of care andcost savings.The Institute of Electrical and ElectronicsEngineers (IEEE) 802.15 standard defines abody area network (BAN) as “a communica-tion standard optimized for low powerdevices and operation on, in or around thehuman body (but not limited to humans) toserve a variety of applications includingmedical, consumer electronics/personalentertainment and others.” Numerousdefinitions of WBAN have been put forth,including: “A special purpose sensor networkdesigned to operate autonomously to connectvarious medical sensors and appliances,located inside and outside of the humanbody.” Miniature devices containing sensornodes that monitor biological and physiologi-cal signals are affixed either on the humanbody or in vivo, and the resultant data areprocessed and transmitted wirelessly.Figure 1 shows a typical configuration of aWBAN. Several sensor nodes are placed onor implanted within the human body. Theymonitor, capture, and transmit biometricmeasurements (e.g., electrocardiogram[ECG] data, blood pressure values, glucoseReview Emerging Trends inHealthcare Adoption ofWireless Body Area Networks