Use Cases
Pilots Implemetation and ASCLEPIOS Demonstrators
To demonstrate the usability of the investigated and developed security framework, ASCLEPIOS will implement three advanced demonstrators based on real-life scenarios provided by project partners from the healthcare sector.
Stroke is a condition where poor blood flow in the brain results in cell death. This can lead to a part of the brain not functioning properly, with signs and symptoms appearing soon after the stroke has occurred. Time is critical in acute stroke care: within a very small-time frame, health professionals need to identify the type of stroke and severity, decide upon the treatment, transport the patient to the adequate care center, and perform the required intervention. The treatment generates and requires a large amount of data that needs to be shared between the health professionals along the whole process. Such data also represent valuable sources of evidence for medical research. Sharing of sensitive data in general raises privacy and safety issues, which can be addressed with the solutions proposed by ASCLEPIOS.
Sleep medicine relies on the measurement of overnight multidimensional biosignals and audiovisual recordings. For inpatients, a diagnostic procedure is called polysomnography, which consists of several biosignal recordings typically performed in a certified sleep lab within a hospital. For obstructive sleep apnea, when a patient stops breathing due to an obstruction of the upper airways, default diagnosis procedure is an unattended home sleep testing. After instructions by the technical staff of the hospital, the patient attaches the sensors to him-/herself at home and starts the recording device. The data are stored within the device and is returned by the patient the next day. In both cases, data transfer and remote execution of analysis methods are not employed for patient data in sleep medicine in the context of daily care, neither for inpatient, nor for outpatient scenarios. Solutions for storing and processing sleep-related data online are limited due to the inherent data privacy and currently used only for research.
The increasing emergence of medication-resistant bacteria observed worldwide is lowering the success rates in infection treatment using antibiotics. Appropriate use of antibiotics by general practitioners (GPs) can make a significant difference in the overall national consumption of these drugs. Studies have shown that feedback showing a GP’s prescription pattern in comparison with his/her peers leads to behavioral improvements. However, privacy concerns and regulations limit access to health data for secondary uses, including antibiotics prescription monitoring and benchmarking. With local computations on the encrypted data, the security and privacy risks in case of an adversary gets access to the server are minimized. Stronger security and privacy can increase GPs’ and patients’ willingness to participate in such quality improvement initiatives as reduction of unnecessary antibiotics prescription.