Virtual Hospitals: Integration of Telemedicine, Healthcare Services, and Cloud Computing

Author(s):  
Shaftab Ahmed ◽  
M. Yasin Akhtar Raja
Author(s):  
S. Karthiga Devi ◽  
B. Arputhamary

Today the volume of healthcare data generated increased rapidly because of the number of patients in each hospital increasing.  These data are most important for decision making and delivering the best care for patients. Healthcare providers are now faced with collecting, managing, storing and securing huge amounts of sensitive protected health information. As a result, an increasing number of healthcare organizations are turning to cloud based services. Cloud computing offers a viable, secure alternative to premise based healthcare solutions. The infrastructure of Cloud is characterized by a high volume storage and a high throughput. The privacy and security are the two most important concerns in cloud-based healthcare services. Healthcare organization should have electronic medical records in order to use the cloud infrastructure. This paper surveys the challenges of cloud in healthcare and benefits of cloud techniques in health care industries.


Author(s):  
Alexander Berler ◽  
Ioannis Apostolakis

The 21st century started with some significant efforts globally in the e-health sector. This was mainly pushed as a generic strategy from many nations and international organizations in order to cope with issues such as ageing population, demographic shift, social security limitations, and financial instability. A second reason was the introduction of new technologies such as cloud computing, Web interoperability standards, mobile health, and social media that are steadily changing the way healthcare has been seen in the last decades. In addition to that, globalization, commuting, immigration, and increased mobility raised the issue of cross-border healthcare and the right to access normalized healthcare services anywhere, anytime. In that context, the authors analyze the technological offerings and result of the epSOS (European Patient Smart Open Services) framework and how it has affected strategic decisions in electronic prescription in Greece, thus creating a new useful e-health national application. They prove that by rethinking healthcare, reusing established standards such as HL7 CDA (Health Level Seven Clinical Document Architecture) and IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise) profiles, it is possible to propose a new innovative system that is in fact based upon new technological propositions such as REST (Representational State Transfer) architecture and cloud computing.


Author(s):  
Vahé A. Kazandjian

The era of data collection about health systems' performance is entering the new phase of timely and simultaneous access to diverse data sources in a systematic and coordinated approach. The concepts of harmonization and the measurement of the continuum of care have laid the ground for the pursuit of collecting, organizing, accessing, and sharing treatment and outcomes results. Service industries, faced with the need for access to multiple data sources, have adopted Information Technologies ranging from localized measurement of performance to regional monitoring of services, and finally into global networking via Cloud Computing. This chapter explores the benefits and challenges of Cloud Computing to the amelioration of medical and healthcare services given the idiosyncrasies of medicine and healthcare. A special focus is given to the extent of readiness healthcare systems manifest to measuring their performance, sharing the findings with patients and communities, and the accountability these systems demonstrate for the promises, implicitly or explicitly, they made about quality and safety of care. The implications of these promises in shaping patient expectations leading to patient and community evaluation of the healthcare services is a central theme running through this chapter.


Author(s):  
Ekaterine Kldiashvili

Healthcare informatics is an important and effective field. It is characterized by the intensive development and design of the new models and protocols. The special emphasize is done on medical information system (MIS) and cloud approaches for its implementation. It is expected that this technology can improve healthcare services, benefit healthcare research, and change the face of health information technology. This chapter discusses the application of cloud computing for the medical information system practical usage.


Author(s):  
Ajay Chaudhary ◽  
Sateesh Kumar Peddoju ◽  
Suresh Kumar Peddoju

The wireless infrastructure based devices can collect data for long period of time even with a tiny power source as they perform specific function of collection of health related data and sending to gateways. The sensing data of healthcare monitoring consumes low power but they had limited computation power to process this data, where the cloud computing plays a vital role and compliment the loophole of wireless infrastructure based systems. In cloud computing with its immense computation power for easily deployment of healthcare monitoring algorithms and helps to process sensed data. As these two technologies did great jobs in their respective fields a conflate framework of these two technologies may lead to a great architecture for healthcare applications. This chapter reviews complete state-of-the-art and several use cases related to healthcare monitoring using different wireless infrastructure and adapting cloud based technologies in providing the healthcare services.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Μαρία-Άννα Φέγγου

Η παρούσα διατριβή εστιάζεται στο σχεδιασμό εξατομικευμένων (personalized) και διάχυτων / πανταχού παρουσών (ubiquitous) υπηρεσιών τηλεϊατρικής κατάλληλων για την υγειονομική περίθαλψη χρόνια πασχόντων ασθενών (Personalized and Ubiquitous Healthcare - PUH). Προτείνεται ένα νέο πλαίσιο δημιουργίας προηγμένων υπηρεσιών PUH και παροχή των υπηρεσιών αυτών στο σωστό τόπο και χρόνο, σύμφωνα με το «προφίλ» του ασθενή. Το προφίλ αυτό περιγράφει τις δυνατές καταστάσεις όπου μπορεί να βρεθεί η υγεία του (κανονική, σε κίνδυνο, κλπ), τον τύπο υπηρεσίας PUH που θα πρέπει να λάβει ανά κατάσταση, το περιβάλλον διαβίωσής του, τις προτιμήσεις του, κλπ. Το πλαίσιο PUH επιτρέπει σε διαφορετικούς τύπους υποκειμένων (π.χ. ασθενής, πάροχος φροντίδας (γιατρός ή νοσοκόμα), εθελοντής, φίλος του ασθενή ή συγγενής, κ.λπ.) και αντικειμένων (ιατρική μονάδα, διαχειριστής ιατρικών αρχείων, κ.λ.π.) να εμπλέκονται ενεργά κατά τη διάρκεια της εκτέλεσης κάθε υπηρεσίας προσφέροντας ειδικού τύπου υπηρεσίες. Η ταυτότητα και η συμπεριφορά του κάθε υποκειμένου και αντικειμένου περιγράφεται από ένα ατομικό «προφίλ οντότητας» μέσα στο οποίο καθορίζονται: α) τα είδη των υπηρεσιών που υποστηρίζει η οντότητα ανάλογα με την κατάσταση της υγείας του ασθενή και β) οι τύποι των ενεργειών που επιτρέπεται να εκτελεί η οντότητα ανά υπηρεσία. Στη διατριβή μοντελοποιείται επίσης το «προφίλ ομάδας» που καθορίζει συνολικά τη συμπεριφορά μιας συγκεκριμένης ομάδας οντοτήτων που εμπλέκεται στην παροχή της υπηρεσίας PUH.Το πλαίσιο PUH παρέχει επίσης μηχανισμούς διαχείρισης του περιεχομένου του προφίλ του ασθενή και του κάθε εμπλεκόμενου υποκειμένου ανά υπηρεσία PUH. Διαφορετικοί μηχανισμοί προφίλ ενεργοποιούνται ανάλογα με τον τύπο του υποκειμένου. Δομικά το προτεινόμενο πλαίσιο είναι μια επέκταση του πλαισίου OSA Parlay που χρησιμοποιείται από τα δίκτυα επόμενης γενεάς (NGN) για την αξιόπιστη παροχή πολυσημειακών / πολυμεσικών υπηρεσιών επικοινωνίας. Το πλαίσιο PUH διακρίνει τέσσερις κατηγορίες μηχανισμών: α) τους συμβατικούς μηχανισμούς ETSI/ Parlay που χειρίζονται την επικοινωνία μεταξύ των οντοτήτων που λαβαίνουν μέρος κατά τη διάρκεια της εκτέλεσης μιας υπηρεσίας PUH, β) τους μηχανισμούς που χειρίζονται την απόκτηση βιοσημάτων και στοιχείων του περιβάλλοντος του ασθενή από δίκτυα αισθητήρων που εκτείνονται γύρω από τον ασθενή (π.χ. δίκτυο περιοχής σώματος), γ) τους μηχανισμούς διαχείρισης των στοιχείων των προφίλ (π.χ. διαθεσιμότητα, προτιμήσεις, ικανότητες, ρόλος, δραστηριότητες) και δ) τους μηχανισμούς ασφάλειας. Για την αναπαράσταση αυτών των κατηγοριών μηχανισμών, έχει δημιουργηθεί μια κατάλληλη οντολογία.Με βάση το ανωτέρω πλαίσιο PUH, προτείνεται ένα ολόκληρο σύστημα διαχείρισης των προφίλ. Το σύστημα αυτό χρησιμοποιεί στοιχεία από τα προφίλ των ασθενών και των παρόχων φροντίδας (ή το προφίλ της ομάδας) προκειμένου να δημιουργηθεί μια υπηρεσία PUH που να είναι σε θέση να υποστηρίξει σχήματα πολλαπλών ομάδων εργασίας, με καλά καθορισμένες συμπεριφορές όλων των εμπλεκόμενων οντοτήτων, συσκευών και υπηρεσιών. Η τεχνολογία των έξυπνων καρτών έχει επιλεγεί ως η κατάλληλη τεχνολογία για τη δημιουργία, πρόσβαση και ενημέρωση των εμπλεκομένων προφίλ. Τέλος, έχει αναπτυχθεί ένα πρωτότυπο του προτεινόμενου συστήματος διαχείρισης των προφίλ με χρήση της τεχνολογίας του υπολογιστικού σύννεφου (cloud computing) – Windows Azure platform. Έχουμε θεωρήσει ότι τα τμήματα ενός προφίλ βρίσκονται σε διαφορετικούς παρόχους υπηρεσιών. Η αποδοτικότητα του αναπτυγμένου συστήματος διαχείρισης προφίλ αξιολογείται σε σχέση με τη χρονική απόκριση προκειμένου να επιλεγεί ο αρμόδιος πάροχος υγειονομικής περίθαλψης προσομοιώνοντας τη λειτουργία και απόκριση του συστήματος σε πραγματικά σενάρια.


With cloud computing (CC) becoming popular in recent years, variety of institutions, organizations, businesses and individual users are creating interest. They are adopting the technology in order to take advantage of shared web applications, low infrastructure cost, utility and distributed computing, cluster computing as well as reliable IT architecture. In the area of health, Cloud Health Information Systems (CHIS) play a key role not only on the healthcare businesses but patients as well. On the patient side, CHIS aid in sharing of medical data and health information, timely access of critical patient information and coordination of clinical services. Patients, who continue to demand for instantaneous and quality healthcare services are now able to access the services from experts even when they are not necessarily in the same physical location. This is being aided by proliferation of telemedicine through hosted cloud architecture. From the business perspective, CC has helped to cut down operational expenses by way of cost-effective clinical information system infrastructure through the implementation of a distributed platform. The platform has therefore saved businesses millions of dollars that would have gone to infrastructural and human resource investment. Even with these immense opportunities, cloud computing uptake has been serious inhibited by the privacy and security concerns. Due to the sensitivity of personal health information, businesses and individuals are apprehensive when it comes to adopting the technology or releasing the data to the cloud. This study is a results discussion of an enhanced model for attainment of data privacy on the cloud through use of multi factor authentication.


2015 ◽  
pp. 170-186
Author(s):  
Rahul Ghosh ◽  
Ioannis Papapanagiotou ◽  
Keerthana Boloor

Cost reduction for hosted and managed services is one of the key promises of Cloud Computing. Healthcare is one such example of managed services that can greatly benefit by a Cloud offering. However, there are many research challenges that need to be addressed before one can deliver a mature service. This chapter provides a summary of research activities in a variety of healthcare-related Cloud initiatives. The authors highlight the key areas of ongoing research and describe others that require attention. The analysis and observations can be useful to healthcare Cloud professionals and can motivate interested researchers to initiate new efforts for better healthcare services deployed on the Cloud.


Author(s):  
Anastasius Moumtzoglou

Healthcare services have experienced a sharp increase in demand while the shortages in licensed healthcare professionals have formed one of the toughest challenges that healthcare providers face. In addition, illness has become more complex while advancement in technology and research have expedited the rise of modern and more effective diagnoses and treatment techniques. Cloud computing allows healthcare professionals to share medical records, including all sorts of image and accuracy while new applications or workloads can be started much faster, without going through the entire procurement process or testing the interoperability of the entire infrastructure. Moreover, although the notion of organizational culture is now routinely invoked in organizations and management literature, it remains an elusive concept. However, it is clear that managing the culture is one path towards improving healthcare, and cloud computing introduces a dynamic system adaptation, affecting the quality of care. This is explored in this chapter.


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