Developing a secure distributed OSGi cloud computing infrastructure for sharing health records

Abstract

Cloud Computing has become an emerging computing paradigm which brings new opportunities and challenges to overcome. While the cloud provides seemingly limitless scalability and an alternative to expensive data center infrastructure, it raises new issues in regards to security and privacy as processing and storage tasks are handed over to third parties. This article outlines a Distributed OSGi (DOSGi) architecture for sharing electronic health records utilizing public and private clouds which overcomes some of the security issues inherent in cloud systems. This system, called HCX (Health Cloud eXchange), allows for health records and related healthcare services to be dynamically discovered and interactively used by client programs accessing services within a federated cloud. A basic prototype is presented as proof of concept along with a description of the steps and processes involved in setting up the underlying security services. Several improvements have been added to HCX including a Role-Based Single-Sign-On (RBSSO). © 2011 Springer-Verlag.