CloudSource Editorial - Issue 3 Welcome to the third issue of CloudSource Magazine, devoted to cloud computing research and development in the healthcare sector. As healthcare worldwide undergoes a digital transformation – moving from paper reports and film-based examination products to high-definition digital content – cloud computing solutions are well positioned to alleviate the burden of the paper/film trail of medical data, streamlining operations for careproviders, hospitals, insurance companies, public-health organizations and more. More importantly, the computational capabilities afforded by cloud computing can help meet requirements for timely analyses of diverse high-definition medical records, and accurate provision of personalized care. In this emerging healthcare environment, there are not only opportunities to be harnessed, but also obstacles to be overcome if effective and secure services are to be offered to the public. This issue of CloudSource Magazine outlines the work of some key EU-funded initiatives, showcasing the cloud-based innovations that are enabling effective solutions for healthcare stakeholders. Among others the ClouT project, in collaboration with the City of Mitaka in Japan, explores ways to better offer cloudbased services to the elderly, by exploiting both remote-sensing data and information on city services. ENSURE seeks to manage the exponential growth of medical data by developing the PDS object storage system; PDS enables the creation of private storage and allows for the execution of storlets to save in terms of computations that occur within the PDS elements. The PINCLOUD project deploys serviceoriented architecture on the cloud, aimed at provisioning home-care telemedicine and electronic prescription, referral and learning. VIGOR++ aims at personalizing care for Crohn’s disease. A platformas-a-service (PaaS) solution enabled by 3DNet, it has 500,000 case studies under its belt, each featuring thousands of images. The SoftCare application, powered by the SEACLOUDS project, offers solutions for the early detection of patient symptoms, improved self-care and care-at-home as well as the creation of social networks. Finally, DEDALUS s.r.l., the Italian software company coordinating the MIDAS project, presents a cloudbased environment for the integration of public health records (PHR) and electronic health records (EHR), advocating a new model that involves physicians, pharmacists and the public all accessessing services from an integrated system.
We wish you an informative and enjoyable read! The CloudSource Team
1
Editorial Board Prof. Alex Delis, Dr. Norbert Meyer, Prof. Dr. Keith Jeffery, Dr. Yuri Glikman, Dr. Toshiyasu Ichioka, Mrs. Cristy Burne,
SUCRE Coordinator, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece Head of the Supercomputing Department at the Poznan Supercomputing Center, Poland. President of ERCIM, U.K. OCEAN project Coordinator, Fraunhofer Institute, Germany EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, Project Manager Scientific Editor and Journalist, Australia
Coordination by Giovanna Calabrò, Zephyr s.r.l., Italy and Eleni Toli, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. This publication is supported by EC funding under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). This Magazine has been prepared within the framework of FP7 SUCRE SUpporting Cloud Research Exploitation Project, funded by the European Commission (contract number 318204). The views expressed are those of the authors and the SUCRE consortium and are, under no circumstances, those of the European Commission and its affiliated organizations and bodies. The project consortium wishes to thank the Editorial Board for its support in the selection of the articles, the DG CONNECT Unit E.2 – Software & Services, Cloud of the European Commission and all the authors and projects for their valuable articles and inputs.
2
Table of Contents 1
Editorial
2
Editorial Board
3
Table of Contents
4
SCAN: A Cloud-based Analytic Pipeline for Advanced Cancer Prevention and
Diagnostics 8
ClouT: Cloud of Things for empowering citizen clout in smart cities
11
A cloud-based PHR-EHR integrated environment for personalization of care
14
ENSURE: Long term preservation of digital data with benefits
18
Let’s talk about new services for patients and healthcare organizations, not cloud
20
PINCLOUD: Integrated e-health services over cloud
24
SOFTCARE: Multi-cloud-enabled platform built around the needs of elderly people
27
Bottom-up: Towards Supporting Personalized Medicine in the Cloud
30
Quantitative Medical Imaging in the Cloud: Enabling VIGOR++ with 3DNet
34
MD-Paedigree, a Big Data and Decision Support tool for mining Europe’s first social medical network in Paediatrics
3
37
News & Events
38
Related International Events
SCAN A Cloud-based Analytic Pipeline for Advanced Cancer Prevention and Diagnostics Wei Xing – CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, the identification of mutated genes that drive oncogenesis has been a central aim of cancer research.. Today, genome studies of large-scale populations are urgently needed to address important issues of cancer treatment and personalized medicine. Studies on this scale require large quantities of patient samples to compare and contrast any patterns useful in assessing whether the genome can tell us more about the undue burden.
4
SCAN: A Cloud-based Analytic Pipeline for Advance Cancer Prevention and Diagnostics
SCANning for gene mutations The SCAN application is designed for such large-scale genomic and proteomic studies. As a cancer detection pipeline, SCAN processes large quantities of genomic and proteomic data, aiming to identify the driver mutations that allow tumors to grow, and then to associate the identified mutation with protein functions within a cell signal network. Taking advantages from CELAR, we designed the SCAN pipeline to run in a ‘just-enough, just-on-time’ manner. More precisely, CELAR provisions the resources required for each type of biological application during the stages of SCAN pipeline execution. CELAR is also able to allocate computing resources to SCAN pipeline runs, according to the size of its genome data. SCAN’s key objective is to efficiently and economically match the resource demand of a variety of bio-applications coping with different volumes of data. SCAN is comprised of a number of genomic and proteomic applications, incorporating multiple levels of biological information, including phenotype, genotype, expression profiling, proteomics, protein interaction, metabolic analysis and physiological measurements, and so on.
Overview of SCAN Architecture As shown in Figure 1, SCAN is designed as a three-layered system, minimizing the effect of changes of data or analytic tools:
the bottom layer is a data layer. the middle layer is a data analysis layer the top layer is the user interface. Generally, the SCAN pipeline has three key components: data entities, process services, and a management or control engine. SCAN is highly sensitive and accurate, built for detecting sequence variants after reference genome mapping, inferring protein pathways and signaling networks, and identifying any links between genotype and phenotype. SCAN is also designed with an open module architecture, allowing it to encapsulate various bio-applications or data analysis tools, including SCAN Analytic Tool Boxes. Also, each type of cancer data has its corresponding SCAN Data Wrapper, and SCAN Databases provide the central data space for integrative data analyses.
SCAN
User Interface (CELAR cEclipse)
Computing services Analytic Tool Box (Genome Process)
Analytic Tool Box (Proteome Process)
Analytic Tool Box (Image Process)
SCAN
Analytic Tool Box (Integrative Process)
Controller Data services
Data Wrappers
Next Generation Sequence Data
Drug Data
SQL DBs (mysql, postgres)
Public Databases
Figure 1. Overview of SCAN Architecture
5
Molecular Data
no-SQL DBs (cassandra, hbase)
Clinical Data Image Data
SCAN: A Cloud-based Analytic Pipeline for Advance Cancer Prevention and Diagnostics
SCAN Key Components Analytic Tool Boxes (ATB) are designed as individual computing services, which process and analyze genomic data, proteomic data, or image data. Data Wrappers (DWAS) are used to retrieve data, and to feed data into the ATB. These data can have any kind of format and be stored in different storage systems. SCAN Databases provide the means to manipulate heterogeneous cancer data, including public human gene reference, protein sequence, gene function and so on. The SCAN Controller is the main orchestrator for talking to CELAR middleware components to enable elasticity and dynamic provisioning.
Running SCAN on Top of CELAR Platform SCAN can be run as an open module application system on top of multiple cloud-computing infrastructures within the CELAR framework. In particular, CELAR allows SCAN to support computational and data elasticity, so that CELAR can intelligently orchestrate and adjust computing resource allocation according to the needs of cancer diagnoses and the individual nature of cancer data.
Proteome Data Processing
Genome Data Processing
Linux HPC Clusters
Integrative data analysees
Image Data Processing
Windows & Linux Servers
Web Servers
Shared memory systems
CELAR SCAN is described and submitted to supporting cloud infrastructures using CELAR. To describe SCAN applications, CELAR provides an application template that includes a service topology consisting of the various node templates (application components), relationships, elasticity policies and management operations, based on the OASIS TOSCA specification.
6
CELAR TOSCA Service Topology For SCAN Genome Data Process Data Wrapper
Connects to
Connects to
Analytic Tool Box (bwa) Node Template
Analytic Tool Box (GATK)
Connects to
Database (MySQL)
Relationship Template
SCAN applications are submitted to the CELAR platform using the Application Submission Tool (AST). The AST will first parse the SCAN description, and then the CELAR Manager will broker the required computational resource to the application. Analytic Tool Box (bwa) Data Wrapper
Analytic Tool Box (GATK)
Analytic Tool Box (bwa) Data Wrapper
Database (MySQL) Analytic Tool Box (bwa) Data Wrapper
Analytic Tool Box (GATK)
Analytic Tool Box (bwa)
Integrative cancer detection Systematic studies of the cancer genome can provide a global view of the molecular architecture of complex traits. Such studies are also useful for the identification of the genes, pathways and networks that underlie cancer. Cancer cells can display a large variety of relatively rare mutations, and processing hundreds of millions of short DNA sequences (corresponding to billions of DNA nucleotides) in a cost-effective way is a huge computational challenge. SCAN is supported by transparent, customizable and elastic resource provisioning by any of the multiple supporting cloud infrastructures. SCAN can also optimise performance and cost to within parameters specified by SCAN users, such as cancer researchers or clinical doctors.
7
ClouT - Cloud of Things for empowering citizen clout in smart cities Isabel Matranga, Engineering Ingegneria Informatica SpA, Italy Urban regions around the world are aiming to offer a more efficient, sustainable, and quality life for their citizens. ICT plays a substantial role in achieving these aims and thus in meeting the growing demand for smarter and more efficient cities.
8
ClouT - Cloud of Things for empowering the citizen clout in smart cities
Living with the Internet of Things By literally allowing anything to be interconnected, the Internet of Things (IoT) has great potential to increase the smartness of cities and city life. IoT devices can capture data not only about temperature, air quality and movement, but also about user preferences, intentions, medical conditions and so on. This wealth of data can inform cities, offering a wide range of options for facing emerging challenges such as efficient energy management, economic growth, development and citizens’ wellbeing and health. It is envisaged that in the coming years the IoT will create tens of millions of new objects and sensors, all generating real-time data. The sheer volume of data coming from the IoT will require big-data and storage technologies, and this is where IoT meets cloud computing: cloud technologies may provide the computing power required to process the data coming from billions of IoT devices.
A project with ClouT The ClouT project brings to the stage of smart cities the two sets of ICT technologies: IoT and Cloud Computing. ClouT sees a group of European and Japanese organizations coming together to cooperate in building tools and applications for cities and their citizens. Prototypes of the ClouT solution will be deployed in four cities: Santander and Genoa in Europe, and Mitaka and Fujisawa in Japan . Each prototype city will then develop innovative applications useful in domains such as security, transport, healthcare and entertainment.
Healthcare and assistance for the elderly The Japanese city of Mitaka, for example, will focus providing on healthcare and assistance to the elderly. In Japan, as in Europe, an important challenge for local governments is improving quality of life for the elderly. In recent years the number of elderly people living alone in Mitaka has increased, along with the need for an environment that supports them in their everyday life. The city feels the need to generate a “symbiotic relationship” between everyone – its citizens, the private sector and the public sector – aimed at supporting each other within the city environment. In this context, Mitaka intends to evaluate the ClouT Platform in terms of its ability to collect and leverage human information. It will effectively match participatory sensing data (i.e. data provided by the citizens themselves) with open city data (i.e. static data which the local government holds). This data match and processing will support Mitaka’s local government and communities in responding to the needs of its elderly citizens. Mitaka’s applications are classified into two types:
The Interoperable Data Storing field trial plans to create and operate a Dynamic Town Data Storage which collects the data of city events and the citizens’ activities. The Actuating-People field trial uses data from the Dynamic Town Data Storage facility to generate customized city information aimed at motivating its citizens to be active and participate in city life.
ClouT in action: aged care Using these applications via the ClouT platform, Mitaka aims to create an environment in which the elderly will not feel isolated at home anymore, and where they can receive support and a set of everyday suggested activities to help them to keep healthy.
9
Through the ClouT platform, the elderly can receive suggested walking routes – based on their health, past walking itineraries and weather conditions. They can receive information about coming events, based on their individual preferences and past activities, and even shopping support can be provided via suggestions on the best pedestrian routes and shop information. By providing a safer city environment, Mitaka also aims to motivate elderly people to go out more and to have a healthier lifestyle. For further information on ClouT project visit http://clout-project.eu/
10
A cloud-based PHR-EHR integrated environment for personalization of care Davide Guerri, Serena La Manna, Marco Lettere, Vincenzo Cestone, Sergio Di Bona, Dedalus S.p.A., Italy Social trends and ever-decreasing resources are pushing healthcare systems towards new, sustainable, patient-centred and multidisciplinary organizational models. As part of this, Electronic Health Records (EHR) are changing European healthcare systems, moving from a vertical approach towards solutions able to organize and manage entire healthcare processes based on integrated care. Following this trend, Dedalus designed and commercialized X1.V1, an interoperability platform adopted by several public and private institutions to provide the infrastructure for a feasible EHR at local and regional levels.
11
A cloud-based PHR-EHR integrated environment for personalization of care
Patient empowerment To improve personalized care, patients must be empowered to become more involved in their own care processes. Patient empowerment embraces the idea that everyone has the right to make their own choices about their health and care. European “Patient Guidance Services� concept encourages the use of eHealth technologies to enable patients to actively participate in care processes and disease prevention, and Personal Health Records (PHR) aim to help patients to directly manage their own clinical data and information.
X1.V1: personal health record + electronic health record X1.V1 is a cloud based PHR-EHR integrated environment that supports patient-oriented short closed-loop care services, involving:
Patients, who have the right to activate their PHR via a cloud-based portal. Each PHR is a specific configuration of the X1.V1 platform, accessible only by the patient, or, with the consent of the patient, the GP. Information provided can be integrated with an EHR system. Prescriptors (e.g. GPs or primary care doctors), who can prescribe therapies and/or the activation of personalized monitoring devices. Dispensers (e.g. pharmacists), who can provide drugs, configure devices and activate, with the consensus of the patient, telemonitoring services. Patients can choose to apply devices and to send monitoring or therapy data flows directly to their PHR. GPs can monitor data provided by the patient. If necessary, other healthcare operators can access patient data through their EHR, if integrated with the patient’s PHR.
X1.V1 architecture The X1.V1 platform is based on a service-oriented architecture and implements the XDS.b (Cross-Enterprises Documents Sharing) integration profile of the IHE (Integrating Healthcare Enterprise) standard, which natively incorporates a multi-repository/registry architecture. X1.V1 also implements a Master Patient Index (MPI) that guarantees the unique, conflict-less identification of patients, a Master Code Index (MCI) for terminology indexing, and an innovative component for Citizen-centred Workflow Tracking (CWT). The X1.V1 Platform is deployed on a set of virtual machines, which can already be released in a private cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
Introducing AmI To realize the PHR-EHR integrated environment described above, Dedalus extended the X1.V1 platform and developed a cloud-based portal upon it. In particular, the X1.V1 architecture has been extended with a new component, the AmI module (name inspired by the Ambient Intelligence and Internet of Things paradigm). The AmI module can collect raw and/or structured information from different devices and store it in a dedicated database, associating each piece of data with a specific patient stored in the MPI module. The AmI module also includes configuration facilities for extracting and summarizing the acquired data, and for producing documents according to the standard CDA2 (Clinical Document Architecture) PHMR (Personal Healthcare Monitoring Report), and storing them in the repository of the X1.V1 platform. The Dedalus portal exploits the deployment of X1.V1 in a private cloud and is delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS), providing a set of standard-based and open services for patient identification and data management.
12
A cloud-based PHR-EHR integrated environment for personalization of care
Secure linking The first time a patient logs into the Dedalus portal, he should create his own user profile and link different care services to it, choosing from a list of the telemonitoring systems that can be associated with the Dedalus PHR. Prescriptors can then prescribe telemonitoring and other services; dispensers can create a new account for the patient in the selected telemonitoring system, and then associate any devices to the PHR of the patient. The credentials adopted in the two sites are associated through a new key (user key), which is generated according to the OAuth 2.0 specifications (http://oauth.net/2), and all the information exchanged will be linked to the identified patient. In this way, information acquired by the telemonitoring device is stored in the AmI database and becomes available and accessible in the patient’s PHR. Moreover, if the patient agrees, the data can be accessed by a GP and forwarded to the EHR of the relevant healthcare system(s).
ORDER MANAGEMENT
healtcare operators
REGISTRY
DOCUMENT REPOSITORY MASTER CODE INDEX
EHR NOTIFICATION MANAGEMENT
X1
V1
MASTER PATIENT INDEX
GP
ENTERPRISE SERVICE BUS
SINGLE SIGN ON
DOCS
Citizen
PHR PORTAL PHMR
Telemonitoring System
Aml component
X1
V1
ORDER MANAGEMENT
REGISTRY
DOCUMENT REPOSITORY MASTER CODE INDEX
NOTIFICATION MANAGEMENT
Aml DB
MASTER PATIENT INDEX
ENTERPRISE SERVICE BUS
SINGLE SIGN ON
Security of healthcare data is a prime concern. As such, Dedalus adopted a three-layered approach that involves authentication of the client (the AmI component), the user (the patient) and the services in the contract (the monitoring devices).
iHealth test case To test and verify the overall architecture in a real test case, Dedalus collaborated with iHealth (www.ihealthlabs. com), a company that designs innovative, mobile personal healthcare products for self-monitoring. Extended versions of the AmI module are now being studied with the aim of integrating a DSS/expert system to create documents from raw data using automatic or semi-automatic algorithms, based on configurable rules. The SaaS-based architecture of the Dedalus PHR allows device vendors to join this care model, by guaranteeing that device-generated information can be shared across the healthcare systems, with GPs, specialists, hospitals and so on. With the patient-centric closed loop, and the openness of the healthcare system, this environment will support continuity of care and the delivery of personalized care.
13
ENSURE Long term preservation of digital data with benefits Orit Edelstein, Simona Rabinovici-Cohen, Eliot Salant – IBM Research Haifa, Israel Wei Wang – Philips Digital Pathology Solutions Industries across the world are undergoing a transition to a fully digital environment. New technologies are producing spirally amounts of data which must be reliably and economically maintained for decades. The ENSURE project has created a reference implementation for a cloud based, long-term digital preservation system. ENSURE works with industry specific cost models to help dynamically configure a system which meets all legal and business requirements while minimizing preservation costs. To maintain the data, the project has developed a preservation-aware storage system called PDS which can run on top of OpenStack’s Swift object storage. PDS includes a Storlet Engine that allows for units of computation called storlets to be executed on the storage server, saving the costs and latencies. A variety of storlets have been developed as a reference. The Storlet Engine supports distributed storlets - where similar to the Map-Reduce framework, operations on large data sets can be parallelized across multiple storage nodes and then the results combined.
14
ENSURE – Long term preservation of digital data with benefits
ENSURE Architecture The ENSURE system’s architecture consists of:
A set of plug-ins that provide specific functionality such as format management, regulatory compliance, integrity checks, and access to specific storage clouds. A runtime Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework that allows an OAIS (standard long term digital preservation functional model) solution to be created from those plug-ins needed to meet a user’s requirements, including any economic considerations. A Configurator and an Optimiser which use cost/quality analysis engines to create and evaluate a proposed preservation solution. ENSURE is structured in two layers: the Configuration Layer and the System Runtime. The ENSURE Configuration Layer runs prior to the initial deployment of the preservation solution and re-runs periodically, in particular if there are major environmental changes. It suggests potential preservation solutions for selection; it optimizes the suggested solutions based on cost and quality estimations. The ENSURE System Runtime is the SOA infrastructure for executing the plug-ins selected by the Configuration layer. This layer provides data management and archival storage services, as well as ingest and access services. It interacts with external storage services which provide the physical space for storing the preserved data and watches for environmental changes that may require the system to be reconfigured.
PDS and Storlet Engine Preservation DataStores (PDS), the storage infrastructure of ENSURE, is preservation-aware and offers storageside computation which has the ability to extract the maximum value from stored data. This is achieved via a consolidated storage platform for objects and computational processes (storlets) that are triggered and subsequently executed close to the data. The storage platform utilizes OpenStack Swift open source for cloud object storage and adds to it a Storlet Engine. This transforms the traditional archival storage to a richer service with automated preservation processes and potentially higher business value. The innovative Storlet Engine allows data processing within the storage thus enabling preservation functions to be offloaded to the storage via storlets close to the data. This enables adding extensions to the cloud storage and creating workload-based solutions without changing the storage cloud internal code. Furthermore, the Storlet Engine vastly reduces bandwidth consumption, enhances security, saves costs of client infrastructure and supports compliance, enabling better cost-efficient preservation models. The Storlet Engine provides special service storlets that can be used either by external clients or called by other running storlets to ease storlets development. One such service storlet is the Distributed Storlet, a compound storlet that executes multiple other storlets in parallel, and merges their results. This storlet is intended for analytics, where distributed data-intensive processing on multiple objects is required.
Digital Pathology Storlets – demonstrating the power of ENSURE storlets Digital Pathology for tissue imaging results in very large data files. Once stored in the preservation system, the performance of retrieving and analyzing such images can be greatly improved by the Storlet Engine because of its “processing close to data” feature. ENSURE has designed a number of specialized storlets to highlight the advantages of this technology such as:
An Image Storlet which reduces the bandwidth requirement in transferring images by only retrieving the relevant pixel data from the preserved images. 15
ENSURE – Long term preservation of digital data with benefits
An Image Alignment Storlet which aligns related images in the preservation system, so that matching regions are returned from these images when requested. A Cell Detection Storlet, which detects cell pixels and demonstrates how the Distributed Storlet Engine can be used to improve the performance of image analysis on preserved images through parallel processing. Using distributed storlets, ENSURE can efficiently and rapidly analyze digital pathology images in the range of 20Gb running on even low end, commodity servers.
16
Let’s talk about new services for patients and healthcare organizations, not cloud computing Maria Beatrice Fasano, ConnexxaLife, Italy Healthcare services are driving the digital health innovation. We can now talk about digital health 3.0, thanks to healthcare integration with advanced IT services, such as cloud computing.
17
Let’s talk about new services for patients and healthcare organizations, not cloud computing
Changes in healthcare culture Until a few years ago, most healthcare organizations focused their IT interest almost totally on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems for management and accounting. Now attention has shifted to their core business: clinical activity. Driving this change is the pervasiveness of IT in patient care. At the same time, demand for e-health applications has grown, linked to the need to access and share data and information anywhere, and any time, in order to have personalized and continuous patient monitoring. As a direct result, there has been a steady increase in services provided and data to be managed. As a consequence, the IT infrastructure in hospitals – both public and private – has become more and more complex, dealing with:
the increasing cost of managing and maintaining IT infrastructure, and the need for interoperability between heterogeneous software and information. Thus to support healthcare facilities, our information systems must meet high requirements for safety, reliability and usability.
n
Transaction processing systems
for
IT
n
Knowledge based systems
Integrated applications
In
d ee
tio gra e t in
Interoperable applications
ing
as cre
Standalone applications
Need for rational decision making process
Turning to cloud
Information systems
Automation
Driven by these needs, healthcare organizations are taking the first steps towards cloud computing. There has been an overall increase in spending for cloud adoption, targeted at improving efficiency, but above all (hopefully!), at providing improved service and innovation to patients. It is evident that cloud computing can accelerate the adoption of new technologies, improving the delivery of existing services and the proposition of new ones. In this light, Connexxalife, an innovative Italian software company focused on developing cloud and mobile healthcare applications, has developed and delivered a high-level solution, called Galileo iClinic. Successfully adopted by several Italian hospitals, including the Hospital Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo, Italy, Galileo iClinic ensures that:
Galileo iClinic in action Accessing medical records is faster and more intuitive Doctors consult with each other remotely and in real-time Treatment plans are updated rapidly, eliminating errors Images such as X-rays can be shared easily with patients Encryption means that medical files are secure Solutions are flexible enough to work inside and outside the hospital Galileo iClinic is suitable for big organizations as well as small and medium-sized healthcare organizations. In fact, cloud computing offers small and medium-sized users a great opportunity, because they can use and take advantage of IT services that until now were used only by large organizations.
18
Let’s talk about new services for patients and healthcare organizations, not cloud computing
Rete UMTS
Rete UMTS UMTS 3G
UMTS 3G
Hospital Network
Rete WIFI
Galileo iClinic
FD - TS
Middleware HL7 / DICOM Gateway Store images
CUP
RIS/PACS
MPI
Laboratory Analysis
ADT
On their own terms… Cloud computing can critically impact many aspects of healthcare, including the implementation of mobile electronic patient records, telemedicine, digital services for the citizen, the dematerialization of clinical documents and computerized drug management. We must talk to healthcare organizations in these terms: cloud computing is not just another technology to adopt; it is an enabling factor to implement new services for patients and improve existing ones. This approach can be difficult for IT companies, as they are often tied to technical discussions. Therefore it is important to create knowledge about cloud computing. However, we must spread cloud in terms organizational benefits, rather than speaking of technicalities like bits, elasticity, and so on.
Translating the vision In this context, the role of political institutions (local, as well as European) is essential. Political institutions and their IT agencies must spread the vision of how a healthcare system can become efficient and truly patient-centric, and not focus solely on regulating procedures for protecting sensitive data, or indicating standards for communication and access to information.
Big data: big benefits Finally a few words about big data, a theme that also involves healthcare organizations, since they collect, manage and analyze clinical data. Cloud computing is also an answer for this need. If we talk about the context of a single hospital, the direct result of a single patient’s data analysis is of course a deep understanding of the specificity of the disease of the single individual and, therefore, a targeted therapy. But let’s try to imagine a technology that gives us the ability to collect and analyze real-time data: about patients suffering from chronic diseases, not necessarily hospitalized, with extended monitoring over time, and about genetic and environmental factors which may affect genetic disease. Let’s now imagine extending and accelerating that data collection, thanks to the same technology, collecting data from a large population, getting a number of examples more valid in term of statistics (compared to current medical research) and more quickly. The consequent benefits for better patient care and the prevention of disease are evident. Cloud computing can be an enabler for this scenario, and so is vital to our health.
19
PINCLOUD Integrated e-health services over cloud Themistocleous M., Koumaditis K., and Vassilacopoulos G. - Digital Health Services Laboratory (DHSL), Department of Digital Systems, University of Piraeus, Greece
20
PINCLOUD: INTEGRATED E-HEALTH SERVICES OVER CLOUD
Most developed countries face significant problems regarding the provision of healthcare services:
an aging population, with increased demand for specialized healthcare services (due to chronic diseases, for example), the need for increased efficiency with limited financial resources (resulting in a reduced staff:bed ratio, for example), increased demand for accessible care outside of hospitals (home care, for example). Advances in information and communication technologies have gone a long way towards tackling these problems. Nevertheless, homecare and healthcare services require intergration of e-health services.
Integrated e-health and patient-centred care E-health integration is commonly approached by adopting integrated patient-centred care. Integrated patientcentred care requires continuous, long-term coordination across professionals, facilities and support systems. This approach can be seen in national healthcare strategies that encourage patient involvement in their healthcare treatment. In the USA and Europe, online personal health records that allow patients to manage their health data have also emerged. These patient-centred approaches empower patients, offering a visual overview of their course of treatment, allowing them to take their own measurements, and to provide verbal and written inputs. In terms of technology, this empowerment is enabled through information-sharing.
Embracing state-of-the-art Many of these applications are based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing: state-ofthe-art technologies that can be used to provide efficient, scalable, portable, interoperable and integrated IT infrastructures that are cost effective and maintainable. Yet despite the significant importance of these technologies, the healthcare sector has not paid them much attention. For that reason, it is extremely important to integrate healthcare services. All the challenges currently facing the healthcare sector can be addressed through an innovative integrated e-health services platform that utilises advanced technologies like cloud computing and SOA.
The PINCLOUD project Providing INtegrated e-health services for personalized medicine utilizing cloud infrastructure (PINCLOUD) is a proposed multidisciplinary project that combines cloud computing, SOA, homecare telemedicine technologies, e-personal health record (e-PHR), e-prescribing, e-referral and e-learning.
21
PINCLOUD: INTEGRATED E-HEALTH SERVICES OVER CLOUD
Cloud Computing Home Care H
Health Insurance Web
Hospital
Doctor’s Office
Diagnostic Center
Pharmacy
Figure 1: PINCLOUD
Beyond the state-of-the-art PINCLOUD seeks to integrate different application components, leading to the provision of an ‘anytime, anywhere’ end-to-end personalized disease monitoring and medical data service that ensures independent living, regardless of age. Constant monitoring can enhance early detection of emergency conditions and diseases for at-risk patients, and also provide a wide range of healthcare services for people in need. Thus we can use the power and capabilities of cloud computing (e.g. dynamic scaling) to overcome the limitations of currently deployed healthcare applications. The proposed applications will be developed using SOA and web services. Systems integration is always a challenge, as multiple users and organisations with different views, requirements, policies, interests and demands interact. For this reason, issues related to SOA governance, security, quality of service (QoS), architectural design and resuability are considered important, and further research is required to address these issues.
Related investigations PINCLOUD will deliver significant benefits to users, society, economy, and academia, and it will extend the body of knowledge through attempts to investigate related issues, such as:
(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f ) (g)
dynamic scaling, scalability, elasticity, security, fault tolerance, accounting granularity, cost allocation, and interoperability in clouds, SOA governance, SOA architectural design, QoS and security, resource allocation and management in e-learning systems that run over clouds, the development of remote homecare telemedicine applications, the implementation of ePHR, e-referral and e-prescribing applications, the integration and management of all the aforementioned applications, and the management, governance and security issues related to the integrated e-health environment.
22
PINCLOUD: INTEGRATED E-HEALTH SERVICES OVER CLOUD
The advances proposed in PINCLOUD involve the integration of PHR systems with pervasive health monitoring systems, as well as user-friendly access to e-referral and e-prescription services provided via a cloud computing platform. To this end, we hope to develop an innovative, comprehensive and robust platform that will address the challenges facing our healthcare systems.
23
SOFTCARE: Multi-cloud-enabled platform built around the needs of elderly people Francesco D’Andria, ATOS Barcelona, Spain and Elisabetta Di Nitto, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Current cloud technologies suffer from a lack of standardization, which prevents their adoption. This issue is exacerbated in the case of cloud-based e-health and social care systems, where we need to deploy and adaptively manage complex and heterogeneous applications across multiple public and private infrastructures. The EU research project SeaClouds was recently launched to address this challenge, aiming to provide seamless adaptive multi-cloud management of complex applications.
24
SOFTCARE: Multi cloud-enabled platform built around the needs of elderly people
THE SEACLOUDS APPROACH SeaClouds aims to equip software providers with “agility after deployment” by providing them with an open source platform that leverages open standards (such as OASIS CAMP and TOSCA) to support the deployment of applications over multiple clouds, the monitoring of such deployments, and the migration of application modules across different (both public and private) cloud providers, as required. SeaClouds aims to homogenize the management of heterogeneous clouds, and to support the sound and scalable orchestration of complex software systems across these clouds. Systems developed using SeaClouds will inherently support the evolution of their constituent services, so as to easily cope with needed changes, even during runtime.
Fig. 1. SeaClouds’ architecture.
To achieve this, SeaClouds employs a user-centric architecture tailored to different aspects of the cloud development life-cycle, providing an open, generic and interoperable foundation from which to orchestrate cloudbased applications. SeaClouds provides services to monitor and manage cloud providers (both public and private clouds), and leverages service level agreement policies to guarantee the required performance and quality of service across multi-cloud environments.
25
SOFTCARE: Multi cloud-enabled platform built around the needs of elderly people
SOFTCARE: CLOUD-BASED SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORK APPLICATION Through SeaClouds, ATOS aims to implement and assess a heterogeneous, multi-cloud-enabled e-health and social care system, built to service the needs of elderly people affected by degenerative disease. The system would provide the following tools:
Peer-to-peer tools to maintain a close link between patients and their public/private health systems, useful in daily monitoring of patient health. Educational tools (e.g. electronic libraries, videos, brain games, etc.) to facilitate personal motivation and enhance the notion of self-management. An interactive platform for music therapy, to improve behavioural and psychological symptoms. Video conferencing facilities to provide a more thorough clinical image of patients to medical experts. A platform that integrates social networks, helping elderly people keen to maintain contact with different generations of their family.
EXPECTED BENEFITS AND CONCLUSION Providers of heterogeneous e-health systems are increasingly discovering that they can leverage public clouds for non-sensitive functions, while employing on-site or private clouds for more sensitive operations or where regulatory requirements exist (i.e. for medical data repositories, etc.). Certainly, in terms of intended benefits, cost savings continue to be a priority; however, more experienced organizations also rate increased speed of innovation as an advantage. In this context, SeaClouds offers the ability to:
Contrast and compare different and heterogeneous clouds in a fragmented market of difficult-to-compare cloud solutions. Reduce operational overheads associated with multi-cloud application management, thanks to simple governance complex application through unified interfaces, dashboard monitoring, unified metrics and user-defined SLA policies between cloud platforms. Help alleviate vendor lock-in and reduce switching costs in an ecosystem of “cloud adapters�, thus empowering developers to migrate and maintain complex systems between competing cloud environments.
26
Bottom-up: Towards Supporting Personalized Medicine in the Cloud Harry Dimitropoulos1, Anna Gogolou1, Herald Kllapi2, Omiros Metaxas1, Lefteris Stamatogiannakis2, Eleni Zacharia1, Yannis Ioannidis1,2, and MD-Paedigree EU-Project 1 I.M.I.S., Research Center “Athena�, Athens, Greece2 National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece Healthcare is experiencing a data explosion, driven by the plethora of medical tests, as well as, recent technological advancements, such as real-time data streaming from new mobile applications and wearable devices. Furthermore, healthcare data reside autonomously in disparate and heterogeneous sources in different hospitals or clinical centers. By making smart use of healthcare data, it is possible to identify disease signatures and build statistical simulation models going one step further towards personalized diagnosis and treatment. Our research team is working on developing systems capable of supporting the vision of personalized medicine by unifying health data from external systems under a Knowledge Discovery (KDD) platform that takes advantages of cloud technology and data mining.
ANALYSIS HEA
DATA
STA TIST
LTH
ICS
TA DA
27
Bottom-up: Towards Supporting Personalized Medicine in the Cloud
A big-data revolution in healthcare is underway. From birth, a person accumulates healthcare data of multiple forms, including clinical records, medical images, genetic data, and data streams produced via mobile applications and wearable devices.
Bottom-up, evidence-oriented analysis One application of this data deluge is the development of model-guided personalized medicine. In developing personalized medicine, bottom-up (evidence-oriented) analysis is of fundamental interest. Such analysis attempts to identify latent factors (or disease signatures) that can explain and predict similarities and variabilities in drug therapies and disease evolution. Bottom-up analysis requires 1) data integration from heterogeneous sources and 2) scalable analytics. To this end, our research team is developing a Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) platform, called AITION, for biomedical knowledge discovery, feature selection, vertical integration, and semantic modeling under uncertainty. In addition, we utilize Athena Distributed Processing (ADP) middleware providing advanced scaling capabilities, as well as, federated data access that supports a versatile execution of distributed algorithms on adhoc clusters and clouds.
The AITION KDD platform The AITION KDD platform consists of three modules:
Data Curation and Validation (DCV) Clustering, and Simulation. The DCV module provides advanced techniques for data validation and preprocessing; checks for inconsistencies, missing values and outliers; computes medical scores; performs attribute discretization, and more. The clustering module is a set of advanced clustering and similarity analysis techniques aiming to identify latent factors (disease signatures) and to group homogeneous patients. Following a mixed membership approach, a patient is characterized by a specific distribution (allocation) on multiple, latent disease signatures. Patient similarity is then computed by comparing such allocations using several metrics. The simulation module analyzes correlations between variables, discovered latent factors and groups to deliver accurate and reusable predictive statistical simulation models based on Graphical Probabilistic Models (GPMs). It implements state-of-the-art algorithms for Bayesian Network (BN) Structure & Parameter Learning, Markov Blanket induction and feature selection, and real-time inference. The system offers a user-friendly interface to explore the graphical models, as shown in Figure 1.
In addition, ontologies and a-priori knowledge can be incorporated, supporting a top-down (model driven) process that complements bottom-up (evidence oriented) analysis, providing a rich ‘natural’ framework for semantic modeling under uncertainty, where a domain expert is able to ‘seed’ the learning algorithm with knowledge about the problem.
Figure 1. The real-time inference capabilities of AITION
28
Bottom-up: Towards Supporting Personalized Medicine in the Cloud
Federated data access and scaling utilizing ADP Over the last five years, our group has been building Athena Distributed Processing (ADP), a system for distributed data processing on the cloud. ADP works to harness the power of cloud computing by defining language abstractions to declaratively express complex computation, and by designing an architecture with clear separation into components with well-defined semantics. ADP offers a high-level language called ADP Query Language, which is based on SQL enhanced with user-defined functions and a new syntax that makes them easy to use. Thirty years of database technology has shown that declarative languages are important because they offer data and platform independence. The functionality of the system can be extended with new user-defined functions, which can be as complex as needed. We offer a rich library of user-defined functions to support the AITION platform, including data import (CSV, XML), statistics (Pearson correlation), and more.
29
Quantitative Medical Imaging in the Cloud: Enabling VIGOR++ with 3DNet Harry Hatzakis, Sรถren Grimm, Biotronics3D Ltd, UNITED KINGDOM and Costis Kompis , Vodera Ltd, UNITED KINGDOM Just as digitization is dramatically transforming the access, distribution and review of medical images, technical advances in medical imaging modalities and computational methods are enabling the development of quantitative imaging.
30
Quantitative Medical Imaging in the Cloud: Enabling VIGOR++ with 3DNet
Quantitative imaging involves a shift in clinical diagnostics, from a subjective interpretation of medical images to their objective evaluation, providing a quantified evaluation of both morphological and functional pathology. The extraction of quantitative metrics from medical images has enabled new measurements and comparisons, enabling the tracking of disease evolution. The benefits of quantitative imaging are undeniable and cover applications from routine clinical procedures to drug development. Multiple challenges, however, still hamper the advancement of quantitative imaging, both in the lab and the clinic.
Medical imaging in the cloud Despite continuous growth in data volume and complexity produced by diagnosis imaging, Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) remained, until the end of last decade, a very lucrative ‘physical’ hardware business, where images were stored on local pre-defined capacity servers and visualized on dedicated ‘high-end’ workstations. It was only at the 2011 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting that major PACS vendors, and various newcomers, unveiled their cloud-based systems. Around the same time we started working on VIGOR++.
A personalized model of Crohn’s disease VIGOR++ is a research project focused on personalized gastrointestinal tract models to facilitate accurate detection and grading of Crohn’s disease – a gastrointestinal disorder affecting millions of people of all ages. The vision is one of a personalized virtual gastrointestinal tract model that can be updated with just an MRI scan. Being sufficiently accurate without the need for colonoscopy, the model should provide a quick and painless way to closely track the development of a patient’s condition, and to alter treatment accordingly. Equally, the next generation of patients with genetic predisposition to gastrointestinal disorders will receive early monitoring and advice on preventative action. This level of patient convenience can be enabled through local clinics, with remote access to clinicians as necessary. The technology to enable this vision derives from multi-scale information from patients, including laboratory, MRI, colonoscopy and histopathology data. For this to happen, VIGOR++ clinical partners (AMC and UCLH) and scientific partners (TU Delft, ETH Zürich, and Zuse Institute Berlin) needed to handle large data sets and perform image analysis, pattern recognition and visualization tasks. At the same time, requirements for good performance as well as security, scalability and usability were high.
3DNet: advanced online medical imaging service The solution came from Biotronics3D’s 3DNet, which is regarded as the first advanced online medical imaging service and community. It uses the concept of Platform as a Service (PaaS) via cloud computing and provides functionalities such as:
workflow, analytics and archiving; centralized image storage and metadata repository; built-in text, data and image analytics that exploit multi-threaded processors; interface with HIS/RIS systems; and APIs for third party tools and diagnostic reporting solutions. The system does not move data over the network. Instead, it uses streaming technologies. Therefore, studies with more than 5,000 images can be available in seconds for review, even over lower internet connections of 2Mbps. 3Dnet is developed using the .NET framework, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Microsoft SQL, Silverlight, C#, and C/C++, but it is operating-system independent. It works with WinOS, MacOS, iOS, Android and others. The system’s components are depicted in Figure 1. At its core there is a visualization engine and an analytics engine. These engines incorporate proprietary algorithms for advanced 3D rendering and image processing, but third party algorithms can be added via an API. 3Dnet follows the IHE profiles and supports the DICOM 3.0 standard: CStore, C-Find, C-Move, Query/Retrieve and Send/Auto-send.
31
User Front-end
Web Services
Visualization Engine
Analytics Engine
Management Engine
Development Platform Environment
Quantitative Medical Imaging in the Cloud: Enabling VIGOR++ with 3DNet
External Innovators
Workflow Platform
Data Gateway
Data Import Manager
DB Manager Metadata
Multi-tier storage
Security & Audit Manager
ISV
Data Foundation Platform Figure 1 The components of the 3DNet system.
The system can be integrated with any HIS/RIS via its powerful HL7 broker. Figure 2 depicts a typical configuration and data flow in 3DNet, showing the way the core system interfaces with the Gateway, HL7 Service in order to enable access via Portals or dedicated Diagnostic Stations.
Figure 2 Typical configuration and data flow in 3DNet
32
Quantitative Medical Imaging in the Cloud: Enabling VIGOR++ with 3DNet
Success in clinical practice Over 500,000 case studies have been handled by 3DNet system since Apr 2012 and each VIGOR++ case study consists of approximately 8,000 DICOM images. Related to gastrointestinal data, 3Dnet supports the following rendering modes: MPR, VR and VCPR (dissected colon). In the context of VIGOR++, we integrated novel automatic segmentation of inner and outer bowel wall segmentation (Figure 2, left), DCE registration, super pixel classification (Figure 2, right) and centerline extraction as well as measurement and annotation tools. The combined interactive visualizations have been supporting clinicians with the grading of Crohn’s disease severity, an important step towards determining treatment strategies and quantifying the response to treatment.
Figure 3 Inner/Outer bowel wall segmentation integrated into 3Dnet (left) and Super pixel series overlaid onto scan data (right).
Showcasing the benefits of cloud As demonstrated by the growing prevalence of cloud services, and through initiatives such as VIGOR++, cloud models can significantly contribute to quantitative imaging research and development. Despite reservations about the technology and the requirement for a proper network infrastructure with highspeed bandwidth and more guarantees of security and data protection, the cloud has shown its potential to bring radical changes to medical imaging collaborative models, process automation, and workflow streamlining. Cloud architectures such as that pioneered by 3DNet enable the creation of federated DICOM-based networks, located over distinct institutions, as well as the flexible, simple and secure provision of unique and integrated viewing tools, and management of resources – data, analytical applications and infrastructure. Such platforms improve recognition of the benefits of cloud models in research as well as in data analysis tool development, validation and collaborative use.
Future challenges The transfer of methodologies from the lab to clinical routine or drug development still presents open challenges. New business models will be urgently needed to deal with the cost of applying these new approaches and optimizing their benefits.
33
MD-Paedigree: a Big Data and Decision Support tool for mining Europe’s first social medical network in Paediatrics Dr. David Manset CEO MAAT/GNUBILA, France and Prof. Patrick Ruch, HES-SO, HEG/University of Applied Sciences, Geneva, Switzerland
34
MD-Paedigree, a Big Data and Decision Support tool for mining Europe’s first social medical network on Paediatrics
Why is big data propelling medicine’s next quantum leap? Because big data is prompting technical innovation, and technology is the main driver of social change. Like medical imaging in the 80s, big data is about to reorganize medical practice.
How? The largest change is driven by biologists with the long tail of disciplines they are creating ex nihilo: genomics, proteomics, metabolomics (the analysis of interactions between biological molecules) and metagenomics (the analysis of microorganisms in the human body), to cite a few. The ability to associate omics with clinical and behavioral/environmental features will allow us to build powerful risk assessment models, able to associate genetic profiles, behaviors and risks… provided that the data needed to generate these associations are made available.
Big data solutions for healthcare MD-Paedigree is an EU project that aims at remove the numerous barriers that threaten the development of big data solutions for healthcare. These barriers include social, technical and epistemological challenges. The social nature of the challenge is relatively well-known, and not all medical practitioners are digital natives. But let us focus on the technical barriers, expressed by the 5 Vs: volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value. While volume and velocity represent the obvious challenges posed by exponential growth of mainly sequence data, we argue that the main challenges lie in variety, veracity (lack thereof ) and value (hard to extract).
Variety The analysis of genetic sequences requires integration of extremely multimodal data (time-series, images, narratives, sequences …). The ability to make these heterogeneous data interoperable is today an open scientific problem. The glue required is mainly semantically rich resources, so-called ontologies, able to organize the knowledge of a given field so that machines can analyze it. Today, virtually all serious developers in the biomedical realm make intensive use of ontologies.
From veracity to clinical decision-support. While traditional evidence-based medicine is constructed using a hypothesis-verification methodology (i.e. all patients with certain symptoms are diagnosed following a stepwise process described in clinical practice guidelines), in the near future, big data clinicians will generate their diagnoses and care plans based on a virtually indefinite set of evidence. For the first time since Descartes, the status of evidence is thus radically evolving. Evidence was traditionally supported by a crystal-clear discourse: this drug is effective according to this proven mechanism of action. However, big data is changing the conversation: here are the data, from which the following (numerous) associations can be derived. MD-Paedigree is thus exploring the development of a case base retrieval engine. For a given pediatric case, the idea is to retrieve the files of children having similar anamnesis (e.g. age, gender, diagnosis, abnormalities, bacterial flora, genetic variants…) to identify the healthcare procedures likely to result in the best outcome. Unlike in evidence-based medicine, where patients are treated with a one-size-fits-all procedure, the treatment will be personalized to optimally suit the patient.
35
MD-Paedigree, a Big Data and Decision Support tool for mining Europe’s first social medical network on Paediatrics
Beyond statistics: clinical decision-making as a social network MD-Paedigree is also tackling the challenge of federating Europe’s clinical repositories. Alongside this, MD-Paedigree must attempt to balance the isolation of clinicians, whose expertise is questioned in the new paradigm: how can I build a crystal-clear discourse out of tens of thousands of individually weak – yet statistically significant – sets of evidence? MD-Paedigree’s answer is to offer a professional tool for consolidating decision-making, offering clinicians recourse to a second opinion: all information pertaining to a case, as well as all evidence available in the knowledge base, can be shared with a colleague. Other pieces of the puzzle include the future exploitation of social media, with two currently promising threads: social networks for professionals and social networks for patients. The former is represented by private players such the US-based company Sermo, which connects more than 200,000 physicians and allows peers to offer anonymous recommendations. On the patient side, the trend towards social networks is well illustrated by a recently launched Innovative Medicine Initiative project, which will explore the use of Twitter to identify adverse drug reactions as part of postmarket drug surveillance.
36
NEWS & EVENTS Announcing the SUCRE EU-JAPAN Workshop – Research on Clouds and IoT in Europe and Japan: current status and ways to collaborate
The event, jointly organised by the SUCRE, OCEAN & ClouT projects , will take place at the EC premises in Brussels on May 16th 2014 and aims at contributing to the EU-Japan dialogue on open and interoperable Clouds. In this light, presentations and discussions will involve stakeholders and key industrial players from both regions. The workshop will also facilitate and foster the knowledge exchange between these two regions, compare success stories and pave the way to future cooperation opportunities between academia and Industry and between industrial players and policy makers from EU and Japan. Further information at www.sucreproject.eu
The SUCRE Healthcare workshop
The SUCRE healthcare workshop will take place within the eHealth Forum event in Athens, Greece on the 13th May 2014 in the morning. In this context, the SUCRE project will support the discussion about the use and facilitate the uptake of open-source development model solutions in cloud computing protocols. In particular, the consortium will examine how the interweaving of open source and cloud technologies can be further stimulated and adopted in the key sector of healthcare industry. The meeting will bring together practitioners from the industry, users and researchers to present recent results and discuss about the aforementioned topics. Further information and registration please visit the SUCRE portal.
CloudSource Magazine – Call for Abstracts Issue 4
The Editorial Board of the SUCRE CloudSource Magazine is pleased to inform you that it is now accepting contributions for the 4th and last issue of the aforementioned Magazine to be published next September 2014. Prospective authors are invited to submit an expression of interest by sending via e-mail and/or via electronic submission on the SUCRE portal a short abstract (approximately 80-100 words) reporting recent developments and future visions in the Cloud and Open Source areas and specifically addressing the theme of Research on Cloud Computing in Europe and Japan: current status and ways to collaborate. Contributions should describe original research and development activities not published before. Very much appreciated are articles received from Japanese, South-East Asian, Indian, and Chinese key Cloud actors. Submission deadline and further information at http://www.sucreproject.eu/content/cloudsource-magazine-%E2%80%93call-abstracts-issue-4
CLOUD FOR EUROPE workshop
Cloud for Europe partners launch pre-commercial procurement The Cloud for Europe project supports public sector cloud use as collaboration between public authorities and industry. The project will carry out a pre-commercial procurement for research and development on cloud computing services for public administrations. The purpose is to research and demonstrate solutions to overcome obstacles for adopting cloud computing by the public sector. The tender will be launched in July/August 2014. For more information about the tender and the related events, please visit www.cloudforeurope.eu.
PROSE PLATFORM
The PROSE project is promoting the uptake of Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) within European projects, through a software forge that supports the software development cycle of European projects, available at http://opensourceprojects.eu. OpenSourceProjects.eu will support your development process throughout your development cycle, and will help sustain the software beyond the projects’ completion, increasing the impact and visibility of FP7/H2020 project results. The platform will provide you with the necessary tools to also open your results to outside contributions and help generate a meaningful community within the FP7/H2020 research ecosystem. To get started register for an account on Open Source Projects and create your project today. Open Source Projects is provided and actively maintained by the PROSE Coordination Action (http://ict-prose.eu). The PROSE consortium members will actively maintain and enhance the platform for at least the next 5 years and are committed to the success and uptake of the open source projects platform as the next generation software development hub for Horizon 2020.
Nettropolis launches cloud mobile apps for public transport companies in Germany
EC funded MobiCloud project makes city transport companies more efficient At the Nettropolis user conference in October last year a preview version of Nettropolis’ Nettro®MCD application, being developed as part of the MobiCloud project, was presented to representatives of public transport companies. The application, which is being built in cooperation with the Karlsruhe Transport Company (VBK), captures operational incidents on the spot and promptly informs responsible field staff, who can then respond and take action if needed. Since this introduction several public transport companies expressed their interest in working with Nettropolis to enable their personnel to also maximise the potential use of smartphones in their work. Full article at http://www.mobicloudproject.eu/#!pr5-english/c28l
EOpen Source Projects (OSP) Europe, in association with the ICT PROSE project will be hosting a workshop
EOpen Source Projects (OSP) Europe, in association with the ICT PROSE project will be hosting a workshop on “Open Forge Eco-system distributing European FLOSS” at the upcoming Solutions Linux, Libres & Open Source 2014 event in Paris on May 20th 2014. The workshop will include an overview of the OSP Europe Forge, the overview of a mobile app which assists in the selection of FLOSS licenses and a session on FLOSS Business Model(s). The workshop and the OSP Europe booth (Stand E14) will be part of the programme at Solutions Linux which is being hosted at CNIT Paris la Défense, Hall Marie Curie, with our workshop in the “Miro” conference room May 20th at 14:00pm. Link to PROSE blog post http://www.ict-prose.eu/2014/04/14/openforge-eco-system-distributing-european-floss-workshop/
37
36
RELATED International EVENTS 2nd Annual CLOUD COMPUTING East 2014
The CLOUD COMPUTING ASSOCIATION (CCA) and the DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION (DCIA) are proud to present this event that will focus on two major sectors of the economy that are leading the way in adopting cloud-based IT solutions: GOVERNMENT and HEALTHCARE. The speaking faculty will be made up of over 50 thought-leaders who will bring broad industry knowledge, technological savvy, and strategic insight. The event will take place at the Doubletree by Hilton in Downtown Washington DC. - May 15-16, 2014. For further information please visit http://www.cloudcomputingassn.org/events/T1401/overview.html
International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) 2014
ISC offers researchers, engineers, vendors and students various opportunities to participate in the upcoming conference and exhibition. The calls for papers, posters, HPC in Asia posters, tutorials, and Birds-of-a-Feather (BoF) sessions are now open. This key conference will take place in Leipzig, Germany, June 22nd – 26th 2014. Further information please visit http://www.iscevents.com/isc14/#
7th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing 2014
The goal of Cloud Computing is to share resources among the cloud service consumers, cloud partners, and cloud vendors in the cloud value chain. The resource sharing at various levels results in various cloud offerings such as infrastructure cloud (e.g., hardware, IT infrastructure management), software cloud (e.g. SaaS focusing on middleware as a service, or traditional CRM as a service), application cloud (e.g., Application as a Service, UML modeling tools as a service, social network as a service), and business cloud (e.g., business process as a service). This conference will take place in Alaska, U.S., June 27th – July 2nd 2014. For further information please visit http://www.thecloudcomputing.org/2014/
Euro-Par 2014
Euro-Par is an annual series of international conferences dedicated to the promotion and advancement of all aspects of parallel and distributed computing. Euro-Par provides a forum for the introduction, presentation and discussion of the latest scientific and technical advances, extending the frontier of both the state of the art and the state of the practice. In addition, this conference provide a platform for a number of accompanying, technical workshops. Thus, smaller and emerging communities can meet and develop more focused topics or as yet less established topics. Euro-Par 2014 will take place in Porto, Portugal, 25th- 29th August 2014. For further information please visit http://europar2014.dcc.fc.up.pt/
Public Sector Cloud World Forum
The Public Sector Cloud World Forum will be the only Cloud event to secure a comprehensive line up of senior government IT officials from around EMEA. Guest keynotes from the US Government also feature in the agenda, showcasing their experience in Cloud adoption. The event and all related conference sessions are free to attend for public sector end-users, ensuring a high profile audience of Public Sector officials in attendance. The event will take place at Hotel Palace Berlin, Germany, 22nd-23rd September 2014 For further information please visit the event website http://publicsectorcloud.eu/
IEEE CloudNet 2014
Cloud Networking has emerged as a promising direction for cost-efficient and reliable service delivery across data communication networks. The dynamic location of service facilities and the virtualization of hardware and software elements are stressing the communication network and protocols, especially when datacenters are interconnected through the Internet. Although the “computing” aspects of Cloud technologies have been largely investigated, lower attention has been devoted to the “networking” aspects. The 2014 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Networking (IEEE CloudNet 2014), part of the IEEE Cloud Computing Initiative, precisely addresses these aspects. The event will take place in Luxemburg, 8th – 10th October 2014. For further information please visit http://www.ieee-cloudnet.org/2014/cfp.html
38