Information Technology Reference
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patient data and for possible locations with more data. Regarding the patients' data,
the agent only retrieves the references to them. Therefore, agents do not need to carry
a large amount of data. Regarding the request of other platform locations with more
information about the patient, it is returned as a list of new platforms which is included
on the agent's itinerary for later visit. After completion, the CA will migrate to the next
location and this procedure will be repeated.
Step III - Once CA completes its itinerary it returns to the origin. There all the
collected information, e.g., document references and new locations, are managed and
stored by the LB.
Step IV - On the home system, a DB is in charge of getting all the referenced docu-
ments collected by the CA and making them available locally for the scheduled event.
Since different institutions can communicate inconsistent facts, the system has to
include a module to check for contradictory data. For example, if it is known for sure
that the patient is male, then he cannot have a pregnancy report; if there is not enough
information then the system should keep both facts, let the reader know there is an
inconsistence and try to solve the problem by alerting information sources about the
inconsistence.
3.2.2 Data Sharing Resistance
Health institutions do not usually have a natural disposition to share data, and this is
precisely one issue the proposal overcomes. By using mobile agent technology, data
is not directly accessed, but this task is delegated to a mobile agent which performs
the actions locally under the security control of the agent platform. This mobile agent
searches and collects data references about the scheduled patients, and this makes a
difference with a wide and remote access to all the information. On the other hand, in
MedIGS the exchange of information is symmetrical between institutions, thus creating
a symbiotic relationship in which all profit in the same way. In short, there is not a
simple sharing of information here, but a controlled, restricted, and symmetric exchange
for which institutions are not believed to object.
As MedIGS deals with clinical information, strong security measures must be put in
place in order to ensure protection for both data transportation and collection. For this
purpose a set of security mechanisms described in Section 3.3 have been used.
3.3
Security
Security has a paramount importance when designing medical information gathering
systems. There are sound and well-known cryptographic mechanisms to guarantee most
of the basic security properties (data privacy, integrity, and authenticity). However, hav-
ing agents that can move along, carrying sensitive data from one execution environment
to the next, and acting on behalf of others, raise new security requirements that must be
considered.
Three cryptographic techniques face some of the main threats resulting from the
utilization of mobile agent technology. These techniques are specific for this type of
applications, and are focused in the protection of agent's data and code integrity, and
access control:
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