By considering error control in different layers, the efficiency of several mechanisms is discussed in the context of wireless optical transmission of mobile health care application data. In this respect, we assume an emitter placed on a monitored patient and a fixed receiver. Because of patient mobility and health care data rate, the wireless optical channel is fading slowly. To ensure reliable communication, we study in the physical layer the low-density parity-check code performance by analysing the results in terms of outage probability. Concerning the application layer, we explore fountain codes, which are also known as Luby transform codes, together with an automatic repeat request mechanism by determining the related outage capacity. Taking into account the performance of both layers, we show that it is possible to design the physical layer code rate in that we maximise the effective data rate in the application layer. Moreover, we point out that Luby transform and low-density parity-check codes constitute an efficient and robust mechanism to reduce optical emitted power, which is of main concern for health care application. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.