Semantic and agent technologies for cloud vendor agnostic resource brokering

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Automated Injection of Curated Knowledge Into Real-Time Clinical Systems: CDS Architecture for the 21st Century

abstract: Clinical Decision Support (CDS) is primarily associated with alerts, reminders, order entry, rule-based invocation, diagnostic aids, and on-demand information retrieval. While valuable, these foci have been in production use for decades, and do not provide a broader, interoperable means of plugging structured clinical knowledge into live electronic health record (EHR) ecosystems for purposes of orchestrating the user experiences of patients and clinicians. To date, the gap between knowledge representation and user-facing EHR integration has been considered an “implementation concern” requiring unscalable manual human efforts and governance coordination. Drafting a questionnaire engineered to meet the specifications of the HL7 CDS Knowledge Artifact specification, for example, carries no reasonable expectation that it may be imported and deployed into a live system without significant burdens. Dramatic reduction of the time and effort gap in the research and application cycle could be revolutionary. Doing so, however, requires both a floor-to-ceiling precoordination of functional boundaries in the knowledge management lifecycle, as well as formalization of the human processes by which this occurs. This research introduces ARTAKA: Architecture for Real-Time Application of Knowledge Artifacts, as a concrete floor-to-ceiling technological blueprint for both provider heath IT (HIT) and vendor organizations to incrementally introduce value into existing systems dynamically. This is made possible by service-ization of curated knowledge artifacts, then injected into a highly scalable backend infrastructure by automated orchestration through public marketplaces. Supplementary examples of client app integration are also provided. Compilation of knowledge into platform-specific form has been left flexible, in so far as implementations comply with ARTAKA’s Context Event Service (CES) communication and Health Services Platform (HSP) Marketplace service packaging standards. Towards the goal of interoperable human processes, ARTAKA’s treatment of knowledge artifacts as a specialized form of software allows knowledge engineers to operate as a type of software engineering practice. Thus, nearly a century of software development processes, tools, policies, and lessons offer immediate benefit: in some cases, with remarkable parity. Analyses of experimentation is provided with guidelines in how choice aspects of software development life cycles (SDLCs) apply to knowledge artifact development in an ARTAKA environment. Portions of this culminating document have been further initiated with Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) intended to ultimately produce normative standards, as have active relationships with other bodies.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Biomedical Informatics 201

Cloud resource orchestration in the multi-cloud landscape: a systematic review of existing frameworks

The number of both service providers operating in the cloud market and customers consuming cloud-based services is constantly increasing, proving that the cloud computing paradigm has successfully delivered its potential. Nevertheless, the unceasing growth of the cloud market is posing hard challenges on its participants. On the provider side, the capability of orchestrating resources in order to maximise profits without failing customers’ expectations is a matter of concern. On the customer side, the efficient resource selection from a plethora of similar services advertised by a multitude of providers is an open question. In such a multi-cloud landscape, several research initiatives advocate the employment of software frameworks (namely, cloud resource orchestration frameworks - CROFs) capable of orchestrating the heterogeneous resources offered by a multitude of cloud providers in a way that best suits the customer’s need. The objective of this paper is to provide the reader with a systematic review and comparison of the most relevant CROFs found in the literature, as well as to highlight the multi-cloud computing open issues that need to be addressed by the research community in the near future

Towards a Model of Heterogeneity in IT Service Value Networks: Results from a Literature Review

At the dawn of the Digital Economy, companies are facing with dematerialization and digitization of products and the trend towards service delivery. By supporting specialization and modularization of service providers, cloud computing involves the trend towards distributed service generation. Hence, multi-vendor networks arise and IT departments have to handle heterogeneous IT Service Value Networks (ITSVN). This research paper analyzes the concept of heterogeneity in ITSVN. Based on a literature review, this paper introduces a model of heterogeneity in ITSVN. Elements of this model are applications, platforms, infrastructures, actors, technologies, interfaces, and tools. Heterogeneity is caused by the diversity and alterity of the attributes of these elements. This article offers a fundamental understanding of the effects of heterogeneity in ITSVN, a definition of heterogeneity in ITSVN, and a model of influencing factors on heterogeneity in ITSVN

Glueing grids and clouds together: A service-oriented approach

Scientific communities are actively developing services to exploit the capabilities of service-oriented distributed systems. This exploitation requires services to be specified and developed for a range of activities such as management and scheduling of workflows and provenance capture and management. Most of these services are designed and developed for a particular community of scientific users. The constraints imposed by architectures, interfaces or platforms can restrict or even prohibit the free interchange of services between disparate scientific communities. Using the notion of 'Platform as a Service' (PaaS), we propose an architectural approach that addresses these limitations so that users can make use of a wider range of services without being concerned about the development of cross-platform middleware, wrappers or any need for bespoke applications. The proposed architecture shields the details of heterogeneous Grid/Cloud infrastructure within a brokering environment, thus enabling users to concentrate on the specification of higher level services. Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

Unified Management of Applications on Heterogeneous Clouds

La diversidad con la que los proveedores cloud ofrecen sus servicios, definiendo sus propias interfaces y acuerdos de calidad y de uso, dificulta la portabilidad y la interoperabilidad entre proveedores, lo que incurre en el problema conocido como el bloqueo del vendedor. Dada la heterogeneidad que existe entre los distintos niveles de abstracción del cloud, como IaaS y PaaS, hace que desarrollar aplicaciones agnósticas que sean independientes de los proveedores y los servicios en los que se van a desplegar sea aún un desafío. Esto también limita la posibilidad de migrar los componentes de aplicaciones cloud en ejecución a nuevos proveedores. Esta falta de homogeneidad también dificulta el desarrollo de procesos para operar las aplicaciones que sean robustos ante los errores que pueden ocurrir en los distintos proveedores y niveles de abstracción. Como resultado, las aplicaciones pueden quedar ligadas a los proveedores para las que fueron diseñadas, limitando la capacidad de los desarrolladores para reaccionar ante cambios en los proveedores o en las propias aplicaciones. En esta tesis se define trans-cloud como una nueva dimensión que unifica la gestión de distintos proveedores y niveles de servicios, IaaS y PaaS, bajo una misma API y hace uso del estándar TOSCA para describir aplicaciones agnósticas y portables, teniendo procesos automatizados, por ejemplo para el despliegue. Por otro lado, haciendo uso de las topologías estructuradas de TOSCA, trans-cloud propone un algoritmo genérico para la migración de componentes de aplicaciones en ejecución. Además, trans-cloud unifica la gestión de los errores, permitiendo tener procesos robustos y agnósticos para gestionar el ciclo de vida de las aplicaciones, independientemente de los proveedores y niveles de servicio donde se estén ejecutando. Por último, se presentan los casos de uso y los resultados de los experimentos usados para validar cada una de estas propuestas

Cloud service brokerage: a conceptual ontology-based service description framework

Cloud service brokerage has been identified as a key concern for future Cloud technology research and development. Integration, customization and aggregation are core functions of a Cloud service broker. The need to cater to horizontal and vertical integration in service description languages, horizontally between different providers and vertically across the different Cloud layers, has been well recognized. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual framework for a Cloud service broker in two parts: first, a reference architecture for Cloud service brokers; and second, a rich ontology-based template manipulation framework and operator calculus that describes the mediated and integrated Cloud services, facilitates manipulating their descriptions, and allows both horizontal and vertical dimensions to be covered. Structural aspects of that template will be identified, formalized in an ontology and aligned with the Cloud development and deployment process

Service architecting and dynamic composition in pervasive smart ecosystems for the Internet of things based on sensor network technology

Why pervasive awareness and Ambient Intelligence are perceived by a great part of the academia and industry as a massive revolution in the short-term? In our best knowledge, a cornerstone of this thought is based on the fact that the ultimate nature of the smart environment paradigm is not in the technology itself, but on a people-centered approach. Perhaps, is in this apparently simple conception where precisely lies the boldness of this promising vision, which has been consolidated in recent years with the emerging proliferation of mobile, personal, portable, wearable and sensory computing: to reach everyone and everywhere. On the one hand, it touches our daily lives in a close manner, minimizing the required attention from the users, anticipating to their needs with the main intention of redefining our idea of Quality of Experience. On the other hand, this new wave impacts everywhere at both global and personal scales allowing expanded connectivity between devices and smart objects, in a dynamic and ubiquitous manner, as a natural extension of the physical world around us. According to the above, this doctoral dissertation focuses on contributing to the integration of software and networking engineering advances in the field of pervasive smart spaces and environment using sensor networks. This is founded on the convergence of some information technology and computer science paradigms, such as service and agent orientation, semantic technologies and knowledge management in the framework of pervasive computing and the Internet of Things. To this end, the nSOM (nano Service-Oriented Middleware) and nSOL (nano Semantics-Oriented Language) approaches are presented. Firstly, the nSOM proposal defines a service-oriented platform for the implementation, deployment and exposure of agent-based in-network services to the Internet cloud on heterogeneous sensor devices. Secondly, the nSOL solution enables an abstraction for supporting ubiquitous service composition based on semantic knowledge management. The integration of both contributions leads to the formal modelling and practical development of adaptive virtual sensor services for pervasive Ambient Intelligence ecosystems. This work includes also the related performance characterization of the resulting prototype according to several metrics such as code size, volatile memory footprint, CPU overhead, service time delay and battery lifetime. Main foundations and outcomes presented in this essay are contextualized in the following European Research Projects: μSWN (FP6 code: IST-034642), DiYSE (ITEA2 code: 08005) and LifeWear (ITEA2 code: 09026). --------------------¿Por qué la sensibilidad ubicua y la inteligencia ambiental son percibidas por una gran parte de las comunidades académica e industrial como una revolución masiva en el corto plazo? En nuestra opinión, una piedra angular de este pensamiento es el hecho de que la naturaleza última del paradigma de entornos inteligentes no reside en la tecnología en sí misma, sino en una aproximación centrada en las personas. Y es quizá en esta aparente simple concepción donde se halla precisamente el atrevimiento de esta prometedora visión, consolidada en los últimos años con la emergente proliferación de la computación móvil, personal, portable, llevable y sensorial: llegar a todos y a todas partes. Por un lado, esta alcanza nuestras vidas de una manera cercana, minimizando la atención requerida por los usuarios, anticipándose a sus necesidades con el objetivo de redefinir nuestra idea de calidad de experiencia. Por otro lado, esta impacta en todas partes tanto a escala global como personal, con una conectividad expandida entre dispositivos y objetos inteligentes, de un modo ubicuo y dinámico, como una extensión natural del mundo que nos rodea. Conforme a lo anterior, esta tesis doctoral se centra en contribuir en la integración de los avances de ingeniería de redes y software en el ámbito de los espacios y entornos inteligentes ubicuos basados en redes de sensores. Esto se fundamenta en la convergencia de diversos paradigmas de las tecnologías de la información y ciencia de la computación, tales como orientación a servicios y agentes, tecnologías semánticas y de gestión del conocimiento en el contento de la computación ubicua en la Internet de las Cosas. Para este fin, se presentan las aproximaciones nSOM (nano Service-Oriented Middleware) y nSOL (nano Semantics-Oriented Language). En primer lugar, nSOM define una plataforma orientada a servicios para la implementación, despliegue y exposición a la nube de servicios basados en agentes e implementados en red sobre dispositivos heterogéneos de sensores. En segundo lugar, nSOL habilita una abstracción para proporcionar composición ubicua de servicios basada en gestión semántica del conocimiento. La integración de ambas contribuciones conduce a un modelado formal y de implementación práctica de servicios de sensor virtual adaptativos para ecosistemas de inteligencia ambiental. Este trabajo incluye la caracterización del rendimiento del prototipo resultante, basándonos para ello en métricas tales como tamaño de código, tamaño de memoria volátil, sobrecarga de procesamiento, retardo en tiempo de servicio y autonomía de baterías. Los principales fundamentos y resultados discutidos en este ensayo están contextualizados en los siguientes Proyectos de Investigación Europeos: μSWN (FP6 código: IST-034642), DiYSE (ITEA2 código: 08005) y LifeWear (ITEA2 código: 09026).Presidente: Juan Ramón Velasco Pérez; Vocal: Juan Carlos Dueñas; Secretario: Mario Muñoz Organer