DATA SECURITY — THE NEXT IMPERATIVE IN HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have significantly impacted healthcare applications by giving the possibility of monitoring the patient’s physiological parameters using different sensors. The use of WSN and the wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) offers possible solutions for monitoring the health parameters in remote areas. On the other hand, the use of wireless communication medium and information security is the primary concern in WBANs. Because WBANs use the different small sensors placed on the human body to collect the physiological data. They need resource and computational restrictions, thus, building the use of complex and advanced encryption algorithms infeasible. It is essential in the WBAN to monitor and transmit the data to provide reliable and secure communication. Wrong and incomplete information can create difficulties in patient health which can be sometimes more dangerous. This gives the motivation to make such security protocols or algorithms to achieve high security in WBANs. So, the research has been currently focused on reliable communication between the doctor and patient, routing algorithms, and the data’s security by using various new technologies. This paper discusses the different security threats and solutions for designing healthcare applications and routing and layer attacks. Furthermore, the paper has been focused on the Data Distribution Service Models for data security. The paper also includes artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms in healthcare implemented by various companies.

Data Distribution Service Converter Based on the Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture Publish–Subscribe Protocol

The open platform communications unified architecture (OPC UA) is a major industry-standard middleware based on the request–reply pattern, and the data distribution service (DDS) is an industry standard in the publish–subscribe form. The OPC UA cannot replace fieldbuses at the control and field levels. To facilitate real-time connectionless operation, the OPC Foundation added the publish–subscribe model—a new specification that supports broker functions, such as message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT), and advanced message queuing protocol (AMQP)—to the OPC UA Part 14 standard. This paper proposes a protocol converter for incorporation into the application layer of the DDS subscriber to facilitate interoperability among publisher–subscriber pairs. The proposed converter comprises a DDS gateway and bridge. The former exists inside the MQTT and AMQP brokers, which convert OPC UA publisher data into DDS messages prior to passing them on to the DDS subscriber. The DDS bridge passes the messages received from the DDS gateway to the OPC UA subscriber in the corresponding DDS application layer. The results reported in existing studies, and those obtained using the proposed converter, allow all devices supporting the OPC UA and OPC UA PubSub standards to realize DDS publish–subscribe interoperability.

Context-Aware Plug and Produce for Robotic Aerospace Assembly

Aerospace production systems face increasing requirements for flexibility and reconfiguration, along with considerations of cost, utilisation, and efficiency. This drives a need for systems with a small number of automation platforms (e.g. industrial robots) that can make use of a larger number of end effectors that are potentially flexible or multifunctional. This leads to the challenge of ensuring that the configuration and location of each end effector is tracked by the system at all times, even in the face of manual adjustments, to ensure that the correct processes are applied to the product at the right time. We present a solution based on a Data Distribution Service that provides the system with full awareness of the context of its automation platforms and end effectors. The solution is grounded with an example use case from WingLIFT, a research programme led by a large aerospace manufacturer. The WingLIFT project in which this solution was developed builds on the adaptive systems approach from the Evolvable Assembly Systems project, with focus on extending and increasing the aerospace industrial applicability of plug and produce techniques. The design of this software solution is described from multiple perspectives, and accompanied by details of a physical demonstration cell that is in the process of being commissioned.