Interoperable support for collaborative, mobile, and accessible health care

E-Health systems, through their use of Internet and wireless technologies, offer the possibility of near real-time data integration to support the delivery and management of health care. In practice, the wide range of choice in technologies, vendors, protocols, formats, and information representations can make even simple exchanges of information between systems problematic. Much of the focus on healthcare interoperability has been on resolving interoperability issues of system to system information exchanges. But issues around people to people interactions and people to system interactions are just as important to address from an interoperability point of view. In this paper, we identify interoperability deficiencies in collaborative care delivery and develop a methodology in two parts. In the first part, an ontology is developed to represent collaborative care delivery. In the second part, the ontology is used to design an architecture for interoperable clinical information system design. We then use a case study in palliative care to provide a proof of concept of the methodology. The case study provides an inventory of the interoperability requirements for palliative care and a perspective on the design and implementation of a people oriented clinical information system that supports collaborative health care delivery in palliative care.     

A user-centric network communication broker for multimedia collaborative computing

The development of collaborative multimedia applications today follows a vertical development approach, where each application is built on top of low-level network abstractions such as the socket interface. This stovepipe development process is a major inhibitor that drives up the cost of development and slows down the innovation pace of new generations of communication applications. In this paper, we propose a network communication broker (NCB) that provides a unified higher-level abstraction for the class of multimedia collaborative applications. We demonstrate how NCB encapsulates the complexity of network-level communication control and media delivery, and expedites the development of applications with various communication logics. We investigate the minimum necessary requirements for the NCB abstraction. We identify that the concept of user-level sessions involving multiple parties and multiple media, is critical to designing a reusable NCB to facilitate next-generation multimedia communications. Furthermore, the internal design of NCB decouples the user-level sessions from network-level sessions, so that the NCB framework can accommodate heterogeneous networks, and applications can be easily ported to new network environments. In addition, we demonstrate how the extensible and self-managing design of NCB supports dynamic adaptation in response to changes in network conditions and user requirements.     

A combinatory framework of Web 2.0 mashup tools,OWL-S and UDDI

The increasing number of Web 2.0 applications, such as wikis or social networking sites, indicates a movement to large-scale collaborative and social Web activities. Users can share information, add value to Web applications by using them or aggregate data from different sources creating Web applications (mashups) using specialized tools (mashup tools). However, Web 2.0 is not a new technology, but it rather embraces a new philosophy, treating the Internet as a platform. Several issues related to the Semantic Web vision, such as interoperability or machine understandable data semantics, are not tackled by Web 2.0. In this paper, we present our effort to combine semantic Web services (SWS) discovery frameworks, UDDI repositories and existing mashup tools in order to enhance the procedure of developing mashups with semantic mashup discovery capabilities. Towards this end, we introduce a social-oriented extension of OWL-S advertisements, their mapping algorithm on UDDI repositories and a semantic mashup discovery algorithm. Finally, we elaborate on the way our framework has been realized using the Yahoo Pipes mashup tool.     

Service-based negotiation for advanced collaboration in enterprise networks

Information systems support organisations to achieve greater efficiency by automating their activities. Nowadays, in the actual competitive and global business context, the advent of enterprise networking has been challenging collaboration, coordination and continuous interactions among dissimilar information systems to adapt and improve them. Sustainability of interoperability among heterogeneous systems regarding sharing information and knowledge in a collaborative dynamic environment is hard to achieve and maintain. This paper proposes a service-based negotiation framework for advanced collaboration in enterprise networks, as a solution to improve the sustainability of interoperability within enterprise information systems. Validation in industrial scenario is presented and discussed.     

Leveraging distributed software development

The Internet has been changing the way people collaborate on software development, offering certain advantages but also creating new requirements. Internet based collaboration does make a wider base of talent available, but the development cycles running at Internet speeds require maintaining higher levels of precision. From a project management perspective, communication is a key factor in Internet based development. Internet based collaboration requires effective team communication. The authors point out that when a development team isn't communicating well, it is nearly impossible to create and validate design solutions and manage the team's deliverables. So while Internet collaboration offers a number of advantages, the friction created by distributed (therefore delayed) communication typically increases the overhead associated with sharing project information. And the technology itself, including system interoperability and the synchronous or asynchronous collaboration tools, can create problems in a distributed development environment. As the complexities of distributed collaborative development environments increase, frameworks designed for such environments will become essential. The authors describe one such framework called SoftDock, and the new technologies it exploits. It lets developers analyze, design, and develop software from component models     

Process interoperability in healthcare systems with dynamic semantic web services

Healthcare systems are very complex due to extreme heterogeneity in their data and processes. Researchers and practitioner need to make systems interoperable and integrate for the benefit of all the stakeholders including hospitals, clinicians, medical support staff, and patients. The broader goal of interoperability can only be achieved when standards are practiced.Two different healthcare systems can earn HL7 conformance and compliance but at the same time can be incompatible for interoperability because of varying implementation of HL7 interaction model. This is mainly because workflows in healthcare systems are very complex. Interoperability on one hand requires flexible mechanism for the mapping of business processes to a standard, HL7 in our example. On the other hand it requires deeper understanding of the standard interaction model and gaps created by their incompatible implementations. In this paper we propose a novel technique of dynamically creating semantic web services as overlay on top of the existing services. We used Web Service Modeling Framework as an underlying architecture for HL7 process artifacts implementation as semantic web services. These semantic services are mapped to our proposed interaction ontology. Integrated reasoning mechanism provides necessary execution semantics for more effective and seamless end-to-end communication.The prototype we tested on different processes from the laboratory domain at a local diagnostic laboratory with uninterrupted process flow. The scenario of Result Query Placer interaction flow and its associated process artifacts are executed for the proof of concept.The proposed solution complements the existing data interoperability in HL7 and leads to semantic process interoperability. The achievement of semantic interoperability results in timely delivery of healthcare services to patients saving precious lives.     

Highly available and reliable communication protocols for heterogeneous systems

Existing and legacy software systems are the product of lengthy and individual development histories. Interoperability among such systems offers the support of global applications on these systems. However, interoperability among these heterogeneous systems is hampered by the absence of a reliable communication environment that supports the development of global applications.In this paper, we show how a generic communication framework can serve as a testbed for the specification, verification, and execution of distributed communication protocols. The development of distributed, global concurrency protocols is much simpler than using traditional tools, like RPC (remote procedure call), because our framework provides a high-level communication mechanism that frees the protocol designer from thinking in a message-based style. We present several protocols that are consistent with realistic assumptions about local database systems, and proofs of their correctness and consistency preservation. We also show that the execution of these protocols is fault-tolerant. The distribution of systems can be chosen according to application requirements, without adaptation of protocols. Fault tolerance can be fine-tuned within the framework itself, so that verified protocols do not need modifications in this case either.Besides protocols for traditional transaction processing, we present communication protocols for advanced transaction models that relax one or more of the ACID properties of transactions. These advanced transaction models enable local autonomy and thus are much better suited for heterogeneous environments.     

ARMADA Middleware and Communication Services

Real-time embedded systems have evolved during the past several decades from small custom-designed digital hardware to large distributed processing systems. As these systems become more complex, their interoperability, evolvability and cost-effectiveness requirements motivate the use of commercial-off-the-shelf components. This raises the challenge of constructing dependable and predictable real-time services for application developers on top of the inexpensive hardware and software components which has minimal support for timeliness and dependability guarantees. We are addressing this challenge in the ARMADA project.ARMADA is set of communication and middleware services that provide support for fault-tolerance and end-to-end guarantees for embedded real-time distributed applications. Since real-time performance of such applications depends heavily on the communication subsystem, the first thrust of the project is to develop a predictable communication service and architecture to ensure QoS-sensitive message delivery. Fault-tolerance is of paramount importance to embedded safety-critical systems. In its second thrust, ARMADA aims to offload the complexity of developing fault-tolerant applications from the application programmer by focusing on a collection of modular, composable middleware for fault-tolerant group communication and replication under timing constraints. Finally, we develop tools for testing and validating the behavior of our services. We give an overview of the ARMADA project, describing the architecture and presenting its implementation status.     

Analyzing the understandability of Requirements Engineering languages for CSCW systems: A family of experiments

ContextA collaborative system is a special kind of software whose users can perform collaboration, communication and collaboration tasks. These systems usually have a high number of non-functional requirements, resulting from the users’ need of being aware of other users with whom to collaborate, that is, the workspace awareness.ObjectiveThis paper aims at evaluating two Requirements Engineering languages i^* and CSRML (an extension of i^*) in order to determine which is the most suitable one to specify requirements of collaborative systems, taking into account their special characteristics regarding collaboration and awareness.MethodWe performed a family of experiments comprising an original experiment and two replicas. They were performed by 30, 45 and 9 Computer Science students, respectively, from Spain and Argentina. These subjects filled in two understandability questionnaires once they analyzed the requirements models of two systems: an e-learning collaborative system and a conference review system with some collaborative aspects support. Both models were specified by using the evaluated languages.ResultsThe statistical analysis of the family of experiments showed that the understandability was higher for the models specified with CSRML than for those specified with i^*, especially for collaborative aspects. This result was also confirmed by the meta-analysis conducted.ConclusionsCSRML surpasses i^* when modeling collaborative systems requirements models due to the specific expressiveness introduced to represent collaboration between users and awareness and the new resorts to manage actors and roles.     

Feature-oriented stigmergy-based collaborative requirements modeling: an exploratory approach for requirements elicitation and evolution based on web-enabled collective intelligence

Compared with traditional software applications, the requirements problem of Internetware applications exhibits a set of new characteristics that cannot be resolved by traditional engineer-centered face-to-face requirements methods. In this paper, we present an exploratory approach to the requirements elicitation and evolution problem of Internetware applications, based on the concept of web-enable collective intelligence, to accommodate the situation of large-scale user communities of Internetware applications with diverse and constantly evolving requirements. In particular, we propose a feature-oriented stigmergy-based collaborative requirements modeling method that combines feature-oriented requirements modeling with web-enabled stigmergy-based collaboration to support large-scale collaborative requirements eliciting and evolving activities for Internetware applications. Two experiments are introduced to show the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach.     

Convergence agent model for developing u-healthcare systems

Ubiquitous networking, the interlinking of computers, consumer electronics, automobiles, home appliances, medical equipment, transportation systems, animals and plants through an overlapping of electronic spaces and physical spaces, is expected to provide an environment that enhances our lives through improved convenience, efficiency and safety in all areas.Today’s healthcare industry emphasizes safety, efficiency, patient-oriented approach, timeliness and balance. u-healthcare makes it possible to safely deliver appropriate services from any location at any time. To explain the emergence of u-healthcare, one must invoke, first of all, progress in IT and medical technology, and then the desire and willingness on the part of health care institutions to adopt the new service concept and increased health care demand. Digitalization of information, introduction of broadband communication and leaps made in healthcare technology in recent years have provided the technological capacity necessary for the achievement of u-healthcare.Based on recently reached theoretical results, integrating u-healthcare environments in virtual organizations, we proposed a methodology for the design and implementation of u-healthcare, linking the distributed mobile agents with medical entities into a convergence and collaborative environment. Despite the challenges in implementing and deploying u-healthcare, the advantages of ubiquitous healthcare are enabled by our smart model for the soft computing endowed ubiquitous. The strength of our approach is that it relates to u-healthcare a system which consists of its dual character emerging from the synergetic interaction between ubiquitous computing techniques and the mobile devices in convergence manner. We have developed a set of initial healthcare agent services on the mobile collaboration framework. We evaluate the functionality and effectiveness of our convergence mobile agent, whether the platform can manage services based on the model and whether the results of u-healthcare services discovery could satisfy user’s requirements with example cases.     

Towards a consolidated model for a collaborative courseware authoring system

Abstract In an effort to reduce the expensive resource requirements in courseware production and to allow effective management of, and communication and collaboration between authors, a model is needed to harmonize the diverse theoretical backgrounds such a process requires. To this end we look at five abstract models which where chosen for their apparent appropriateness within the general area of collaborative authoring and reuse of multimedia courseware. These models consist of a functional model of hypertext, an infrastructure model for an open collaborative authoring system, two object-oriented communication models, and a courseware production model. We attempt a consolidation of these models and ultimately make several conclusions, which are exposed during a conceptual harmonisation. The principal conclusion is that a hypermedia logical model is not by itself adequate to support collaboration and reuse. Our modeling conclusions have driven the design of a system which will be implemented and tested.     

Distributed process execution in collaborative networks

Processes are a central entity in enterprise collaboration. Collaborative processes need to be executed and coordinated in a distributed computational platform where computers are connected through heterogeneous networks and systems. Life cycle management of such collaborative processes requires a framework able to handle their diversity based on different computational and communication requirements. This paper proposes a rational for such framework, points out key requirements and proposes a strategy for a supporting technological infrastructure. Beyond the portability of collaborative process definitions among different technological bindings, a framework to handle different life cycle phases of those definitions is presented and discussed.     

多自治域协同环境中群组通信的安全访问控制

支持多自治域协作的安全通信环境是大规模分布式应用的基础,群通信由于高效、可伸缩等特点,成为这种协作环境的一种基本通信方式．然而,由于没有集中的控制中心,实体分别隶属于异构的自治域且动态变化,引发了大量新的安全访问控制问题．针对多域协作的异构性和动态性特点,提出一套基于角色的分布式信任管理的解决方案,重点解决了动态联合授权以及基于属性的委托授权．在此基础上建立了一套较完整的安全通信体系,包括安全策略的协商、信任证的颁发、信任证与安全策略的一致性验证以及用户访问权限论证等．它为多域协作环境的群通信提供了更加灵活、可靠、安全的访问控制模式．     

Leveraging Java applets: toward collaboration transparency in Java

Widespread use of the Internet is giving rise to the need for collaborative applications that link users at remote sites. Many toolkits support the development of collaboration-aware applications, those developed specifically for cooperative work by multiple users. Another approach is collaboration transparency, the collaborative use of applications originally developed for a single user. When the runtime environment supports collaboration transparency, an application programmer need not write new code to make an application collaborative. Thus, collaboration transparency leverages the existing base of single user applications by extending them to collaborative use. We review options for providing collaboration transparency. We also discuss how collaboration transparency can be incorporated into Sun Microsystems' Java, the most widely used vehicle for developing interactive World Wide Web applications     

Constraint meta-object: a new object model for distributedcollaborative designing

Object databases have been recognized as providing rich data modeling capabilities for the next-generation applications, especially CAD/CAM, software engineering, and multimedia. The core object model consisting of objects, messages and inheritance, however, is not adequate to tackle all the requirements of these applications. Since collaborative activity is one of the key features of next-generation applications, it is essential that the basic object model be extended to support collaborative activity. We propose an object model for collaborative designing based on objects and constraint meta-objects. Each design object has an associated constraint space consisting of one or more constraint meta-objects. The object/constraint meta-object separation achieves a clear distinction between design object and its associated design environment and provides a framework for supporting collaboration among members of a design team. Collaboration is modeled as dependencies among multiple constraint spaces on different nodes, and collaborative activity as design transactions satisfying local constraints and propagating constraints among interrelated constraint spaces. We propose language extensions to C++ for capturing the object/constraint meta-object paradigm. The extensions are implemented using filters, a special mechanism for capturing messages sent to an object. Our model has been applied to the case of a mechanical CAD problem     

MDA与企业协同项目管理

MDA方法是提供一种工具链条,这个链条具有应用程序接口的扩展性和互操作性,以确保相关模型通过异构程序的不同组件达到共享的目的。现有的MDA工具通常只支持MDA开发过程的一个片断,这篇文章讨论的是MDA工具和组件在跨企业项目管理中起到的作用。MDA组件和工具可以看做跨企业的元素,在共享的抽象计算平台上应用结构需求,为本方项目管理服务提供服务描述和产生接口,最终的目的就是为了跨企业协同项目的建立和管理。     

Knowledge-based system for collaborative process specification

This paper presents an ontology-based approach for the design of a collaborative business process model (CBP). This CBP is considered as a specification of needs in order to build a collaboration information system (CIS) for a network of organizations. The study is a part of a model-driven engineering approach of the CIS in a specific enterprise interoperability framework that will be summarised. An adaptation of the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) is used to represent the CBP model. We develop a knowledge-based system (KbS) which is composed of three main parts: knowledge gathering, knowledge representation and reasoning, and collaborative business process modelling. The first part starts from a high abstraction level where knowledge from business partners is captured. A collaboration ontology is defined in order to provide a structure to store and use the knowledge captured. In parallel, we try to reuse generic existing knowledge about business processes from the MIT Process Handbook repository. This results in a collaboration process ontology that is also described. A set of rules is defined in order to extract knowledge about fragments of the CBP model from the two previous ontologies. These fragments are finally assembled in the third part of the KbS. A prototype of the KbS has been developed in order to implement and support this approach. The prototype is a computer-aided design tool of the CBP. In this paper, we will present the theoretical aspects of each part of this KbS as well as the tools that we developed and used in order to support its functionalities.     

An Integrated Telepresence Environment for Collaboration in Construction

For construction projects involving transient ‘virtual organisations’ composed of non-collocated team-members, the adoption of concurrent engineering principles is seen as vital. An important aspect of concurrent engineering in construction is the need for an effective communications infrastructure between team members. Traditionally, such communication has been handled through person-to-person meetings, however the complexity of construction projects has grown and, as a result, reliance on new information and communications technologies is becoming increasingly necessary. Hence, within a concurrent engineering setting, there is the need for an integrated information and collaboration environment that will create a persistent space to support interaction between project personnel throughout all phases of construction projects. This joint initiative between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Loughborough University, British Telecommunications plc. (BT) and Kajima Corporation explores computer-supported mechanisms for enhancing distributed engineering collaboration. The goal of this paper is to develop a set of requirements, a system architecture and a system prototype to facilitate computer-supported collaboration among distributed teams. The prototype consists of a comprehensive working collaborative system built from the integration of complementary standalone applications. These applications are the CAIRO system, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Telepresence system developed by Loughborough University and BT.