Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
supports only partially these requirements as the usage of the clinical information
system is isolated from third parties such as from patient's family members.
Apart from the co-operation support, the member's of patient's healthcare team
should have a seamless access to patient's health data, which is usually stored in elec-
tronic health record (EHR) [15] or personal health records (PHR) [16]. The former is
managed by medical authorities while the latter managed by the patient and all that
are authorized by the patient are allowed to access it [17]. Hence patient's PHR,
which in our architecture is a component of the PHIS, has a central role to support
emerging healthcare models.
4
Cloud-Based PHIS
Cloud computing is a technology that uses the Internet and central remote servers to
maintain data and applications [18]. It is an evaluation of the widespread adoption of
virtualization, service oriented architecture and utility computing. The name cloud
computing was originally inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent
the internet in diagrams.
Cloud computing allows consumers and businesses to use applications without in-
stallation, and they can access their personal files at any computer with internet
access. This technology allows for more efficient computing by centralizing storage,
memory, processing and bandwidth. Further, unlike traditional hosting it provides the
following useful characteristics:
The resources of the cloud can be used on demand, typically by the minutes.
The used resources are easily scalable in the sense that users can have as much or
as little of a service as they want at any given time.
The resources are fully managed by the provider. The consumer does not need any
complex resource, only a personal computer with internet access.
Software as a service (SaaS), is a type of cloud computing. In this service model, a
service provider licenses an application to customers either as a service on demand,
through a subscription, in a "pay-as-you-go" model, or at no charge [19]. The SaaS
model to application delivery is part of the utility computing model where all of the
technology is in the "cloud" accessed over the internet as a service.
There are various architectural ways for implementing the SaaS model including
the followings [18]:
Each customer has a customized version of the hosted application that runs as its
own instance on the host's servers.
Many customers use separate instances of the same application code.
A single program instance serves all customers.
In the case of PHISs the required computation is rather small compared to traditional
business applications and thus the last mentioned architecture is appropriate for the
implementation of the PHIS, i.e., a single PHIS serves all patients. However, patient
specific data can only be accessed by the patient and those that are authorized by the
patient.
The SaaS-based PHIS and its users are presented in Figure 2.
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