Using digital watermarking to enhance security in wireless medical image transmission

This is the published version of the article. Copyright 2010 Mary Ann Liebert Inc.During the last few years, wireless networks have been increasingly used both inside hospitals and in patients’ homes to transmit medical information. In general, wireless networks suffer from decreased security. However, digital watermarking can be used to secure medical information. In this study, we focused on combining wireless transmission and digital watermarking technologies to better secure the transmission of medical images within and outside the hospital. Methods: We utilized an integrated system comprising the wireless network and the digital watermarking module to conduct a series of tests. Results: The test results were evaluated by medical consultants. They concluded that the images suffered no visible quality degradation and maintained their diagnostic integrity. Discussion: The proposed integrated system presented reasonable stability, and its performance was comparable to that of a fixed network. This system can enhance security during the transmission of medical images through a wireless channel.The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Hellenic Ministry of Development and the British Council

Next-Generation Personalized Investment Recommendations

Recent advances in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence have created new opportunities for AI-based agents, referred to as Robo-Advisors, to provide financial advice and recommendations to investors. In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of investment recommendation and describe how automated services for this task can be developed and tested. In particular, this chapter covers the following core topics: (1) the legal landscape for investment recommendation systems, (2) what financial asset recommendation is and what data it needs to function, (3) how to clean and curate that data, (4) approaches to build/train asset recommendation models and (5) how to evaluate such systems prior to putting them into production

Research, development and evaluation of a communication protocol and a wireless personal area networking system for application in real time homecare monitoring

The utilization of Information & Communications Technologies for the provision of healthcare services can significantly contribute in overcoming the obstacles and challenges presented at a worldwide level which hinder the qualitative provision of such services to the citizens who are the final recipients. E-Health can contribute in guaranteeing improved healthcare services at reduced costs, in the frame of healthcare service provision systems targeted towards the citizens. It is the modern tool for the achievement of productivity increase and the future means for the restructuring of citizen-centred healthcare systems. The new healthcare model which e-Health promoted however imposes some constraints regarding the way these services are delivered. The first significant constraint regards the standardization of the communicated data. Despite the significant effort put in the development of integrated information systems, and even though effort has also been put in the standardization of the data exchanged between these systems, until today no certified protocol is being used by medical instrumentation manufacturers in the field of homecare service provision. The second constraint regards the credibility percentage of the wireless networks that are utilized for the deployment of the architecture of remote monitoring systems, which are responsible for the transmission of the collected information to remote centres where this information is evaluated. The scope of the current thesis is the proposition of solutions and guidelines which will enable the application of the suggested homecare system architectures in clinical practice. Regarding the standardization and formatting of transmitted data, the expansion of the SCP-ECG protocol is presented so that it may support a plethora of critical biosignals other than ECG which it currently supports. In this way it will be able to support the diverse needs of homecare. In addition, several guidelines are presented regarding the utilization of wireless personnal area networks for patient monitoring, which were extracted from the implementation of rather exhaustive experimental measurements conducted under different circumstances, which were modeled as different experimental scenarios.Η αξιοποίηση των τεχνολογιών πληροφορικής και επικοινωνιών για την παροχή υπηρεσιών υγείας μπορεί να συντελέσει σημαντικά στην υπερπήδηση των εμποδίων και των προκλήσεων που παρουσιάζονται σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο και παρακωλύουν την ποιοτική προσφορά τέτοιων υπηρεσιών στους πολίτες που είναι και οι τελικοί αποδέκτες. Η ηλεκτρονική υγεία μπορεί να συμβάλει στην εξασφάλιση βελτιωμένης περίθαλψης με μικρότερη δαπάνη, στο πλαίσιο συστημάτων διανομής υπηρεσιών υγείας που είναι επικεντρωμένα στους πολίτες. Είναι το σύγχρονο εργαλείο για την επίτευξη σημαντικών αυξήσεων στην παραγωγικότητα, και το μελλοντικό μέσο για την αναδιάρθρωση των συστημάτων υγείας που είναι επικεντρωμένα στον πολίτη. Το νέο όμως μοντέλο περίθαλψης το οποίο προάγει η e-Υγεία δεν συνιστά από μόνο του πανάκεια αλλά εισάγει κάποιους προβληματισμούς αλλά και περιορισμούς αναφορικά με τον τρόπο παροχής των υπηρεσιών αυτών. Ο πρώτος σημαντικός περιορισμός αφορά στην προτυποποίηση των μεταδιδόμενων δεδομένων. Παρά τη σημαντική προσπάθεια ανάπτυξης ολοκληρωμένων πληροφοριακών συστημάτων και παρότι καταβάλλεται σημαντική προσπάθεια προτυποποίησης των μεταδιδόμενων δεδομένων, έως σήμερα δεν υπάρχει ένα πιστοποιημένο πρωτόκολλο το οποίο να χρησιμοποιείται από τους κατασκευαστές ιατροτεχνολογικού εξοπλισμού στην παροχή υπηρεσιών κατ' οίκον νοσηλείας. Ο δεύτερος σημαντικός περιορισμός αφορά το ποσοστό αξιοπιστίας των ασύρματων δικτύων τα οποία αξιοποιούνται κατά την αρχιτεκτονική σχεδίαση συστημάτων απομακρυσμένης περίθαλψης, τα οποία είναι υπεύθυνα για την αποστολή της πληροφορίας σε κέντρα συντονισμού στα οποία γίνεται η αξιολόγηση της πληροφορίας αυτής. Σκοπός της διατριβής ήταν η πρόταση λύσεων και οδηγιών οι οποίες θα επιτρέψουν την εφαρμογή των προτεινόμενων αρχιτεκτονικών της κατ' οίκον νοσηλείας στην κλινική πράξη. Αναφορικά με την προτυποποίηση και μορφοποίηση των μεταδιδόμενων δεδομένων, στα πλαίσια της διατριβής παρουσιάζεται η επέκταση του υφιστάμενου πρωτοκόλλου SCP-ECG, ώστε να μπορεί να υποστηρίξει πληθώρα άλλων βιοσημάτων πέραν του υποστηριζόμενου ΗΚΓ και κατ' επέκταση να υποστηρίξει τις ποικιλόμορφες ανάγκες της κατ' οίκον νοσηλείας. Επιπλέον παρατίθεται η σύσταση οδηγιών αναφορικά με την αξιοποίηση ασύρματων τεχνολογιών δικτύωσης μικρής εμβέλειας για την παρακολούθηση ασθενών, τα οποία προέκυψαν από την πραγματοποίηση εκτενών πειραματικών μετρήσεων υπό διαφορετικές συνθήκες οι οποίες μοντελοποιήθηκαν υπό τη μορφή διαφορετικών σεναρίων

IoT in Healthcare: Achieving Interoperability of High-Quality Data Acquired by IoT Medical Devices

It is an undeniable fact that Internet of Things (IoT) technologies have become a milestone advancement in the digital healthcare domain, since the number of IoT medical devices is grown exponentially, and it is now anticipated that by 2020 there will be over 161 million of them connected worldwide. Therefore, in an era of continuous growth, IoT healthcare faces various challenges, such as the collection, the quality estimation, as well as the interpretation and the harmonization of the data that derive from the existing huge amounts of heterogeneous IoT medical devices. Even though various approaches have been developed so far for solving each one of these challenges, none of these proposes a holistic approach for successfully achieving data interoperability between high-quality data that derive from heterogeneous devices. For that reason, in this manuscript a mechanism is produced for effectively addressing the intersection of these challenges. Through this mechanism, initially, the collection of the different devices’ datasets occurs, followed by the cleaning of them. In sequel, the produced cleaning results are used in order to capture the levels of the overall data quality of each dataset, in combination with the measurements of the availability of each device that produced each dataset, and the reliability of it. Consequently, only the high-quality data is kept and translated into a common format, being able to be used for further utilization. The proposed mechanism is evaluated through a specific scenario, producing reliable results, achieving data interoperability of 100% accuracy, and data quality of more than 90% accuracy