Health Sector Applications

The research and development costs of new drugs in the pharmaceutical industry are rising exponentially as the number of newly approved drugs continues to fall. Here, high throughput methods, which deliver much broader answers to biomedical issues, promise an improvement. Data is generated in quantities that require computing power not ordinarily available to SMEs. Cloud computing provides access to the necessary computing power with the appropriate level of protection appropriate to the highly sensitive nature of the corporate pharmaceutical data generated.

GeneCloud is developing three drug screening applications which allow biomarkers in cancer therapies to be forecast, test agents for their ability to bind to target proteins and predict side effects through automated literature analysis. All three applications share the fact that they need to be parallelized for the cloud and special processes for the protection of data are necessary. Cryptographic technologies are insufficient as even the data receiver (i.e. external cloud provider) should not be able to access the data.

GeneCloud eliminates this problem by developing a new steganographic security concept. Classical cryptographic processes are extended by making use of new domain-specific steganographic procedures. These make provision for the anonymization, mixing and hiding of data to realize flexible and scalable protection.

TRESOR will make a "trusted cloud" infrastructure that provides all of the appropriate legal requirements, safety and data protection guidelines as well as individual health sector institution guidelines available for the first time.

Supply structures within the health care sector are becoming increasingly specialized. Requirements placed on the health sector in future will not be realizable without a functional networking of the different performance levels. Software systems deployed today are operations-based as opposed to process-oriented set-ups which have developed over the years (i.e. the networking of the different performance levels can only be poorly implemented on the basis of existing solutions).

A new generation architecture change awaits established market systems which, through a “make or break” pervasiveness of the developed systems (e.g. attempt to implement clinical pathways into a non-generic and non-workflow-oriented system), will only partially be implemented. As well as this, the operation of the respective solutions is complex and cost-intensive.

The barriers mentioned are eliminated through a standardized modularization of medical applications services, allowing the reuse of cloud-based services according to innovative business models. This means cost optimization and investment protection alongside a measurable increase in patient care quality.

One of the biggest challenges of cross-clinic in-patient care is the design of a data protection compliant, closed and inter-institutional process chain with seamless media -based process documentation system.

The TRESOR project meets this challenge through the exemplary implementation of seamless media-based medical process documentation between project-participating hospitals. A further intention of the TRESOR project is the establishment of cloud-based medical treatment-supporting services for the reliable testing of drug interactions according to currently available information. TRESOR puts the forward-looking development of cloud-enabled software services in view.