Building a collaborative cloud platform to accelerate heart, lung, blood, and sleep research.

Research increasingly relies on interrogating large-scale data resources. The NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute developed the NHLBI BioData CatalystⓇ (BDC), a community-driven ecosystem where researchers, including bench and clinical scientists, statisticians, and algorithm developers, find, access, share, store, and compute on large-scale datasets. This ecosystem provides secure, cloud-based workspaces, user authentication and authorization, search, tools and workflows, applications, and new innovative features to address community needs, including exploratory data analysis, genomic and imaging tools, tools for reproducibility, and improved interoperability with other NIH data science platforms. BDC offers straightforward access to large-scale datasets and computational resources that support precision medicine for heart, lung, blood, and sleep conditions, leveraging separately developed and managed platforms to maximize flexibility based on researcher needs, expertise, and backgrounds. Through the NHLBI BioData Catalyst Fellows Program, BDC facilitates scientific discoveries and technological advances. BDC also facilitated accelerated research on the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Suspended Particulate Matter Analysis of Pre and During Covid Lockdown Using Google Earth Engine Cloud Computing: A Case Study of Ukai Reservoir.

Presence of suspended particulate matter (SPM) in a waterbody or a river can be caused by multiple parameters such as other pollutants by the discharge of poorly maintained sewage, siltation, sedimentation, flood and even bacteria. In this study, remote sensing techniques were used to understand the effects of pandemic-induced lockdown on the SPM concentration in the lower Tapi reservoir or Ukai reservoir. The estimation was done using Landsat-8 OLI (Operational Land Imager) having radiometric resolution (12-bit) and a spatial resolution of 30 m. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform was used in this study to generate the products. The GEE is a semi-automated workflow system using a robust approach designed for scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets. An algorithm was deployed, and a time-series (2013-2020) analysis was done for the study area. It was found that the average mean value of SPM in Tapi River during 2020 is lowest than the last seven years at the same time.

Fog-cloud architecture-driven Internet of Medical Things framework for healthcare monitoring.

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has increased the need for new technologies such as the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs), and cloud computing in the health sector as well as in many areas. These technologies have also made it possible for billions of devices to connect to the internet and communicate with each other. In this study, an Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) framework consisting of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) has been designed and the health big data from WBANs have been analyzed using fog and cloud computing technologies. Fog computing is used for fast and easy analysis, and cloud computing is used for time-consuming and complex analysis. The proposed IoMT framework is presented with a diabetes prediction scenario. The diabetes prediction process is carried out on fog with fuzzy logic decision-making and is achieved on cloud with support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and artificial neural network (ANN) as machine learning algorithms. The dataset produced in WBANs is used for big data analysis in the scenario for both fuzzy logic and machine learning algorithm. The fuzzy logic gives 64% accuracy performance in fog and SVM, RF, and ANN have 89.5%, 88.4%, and 87.2% accuracy performance respectively in the cloud for diabetes prediction. In addition, the throughput and delay results of heterogeneous nodes with different priorities in the WBAN scenario created using the IEEE 802.15.6 standard and AODV routing protocol have been also analyzed. Fog-Cloud architecture-driven for IoMT networks • An IoMT framework is designed with important components and functions such as fog and cloud node capabilities. •Real-time data has been obtained from WBANs in Riverbed Modeler for a more realistic performance analysis of IoMT. •Fuzzy logic and machine learning algorithms (RF, SVM, and ANN) are used for diabetes predictions. •Intra and Inter-WBAN communications (IEEE 802.15.6 standard) are modeled as essential components of the IoMT framework with all functions.

JUNO Project: Deployment and Validation of a Low-Cost Cloud-Based Robotic Platform for Reliable Smart Navigation and Natural Interaction with Humans in an Elderly Institution.

This paper describes the main results of the JUNO project, a proof of concept developed in the Region of Murcia in Spain, where a smart assistant robot with capabilities for smart navigation and natural human interaction has been developed and deployed, and it is being validated in an elderly institution with real elderly users. The robot is focused on helping people carry out cognitive stimulation exercises and other entertainment activities since it can detect and recognize people, safely navigate through the residence, and acquire information about attention while users are doing the mentioned exercises. All the information could be shared through the Cloud, if needed, and health professionals, caregivers and relatives could access such information by considering the highest standards of privacy required in these environments. Several tests have been performed to validate the system, which combines classic techniques and new Deep Learning-based methods to carry out the requested tasks, including semantic navigation, face detection and recognition, speech to text and text to speech translation, and natural language processing, working both in a local and Cloud-based environment, obtaining an economically affordable system. The paper also discusses the limitations of the platform and proposes several solutions to the detected drawbacks in this kind of complex environment, where the fragility of users should be also considered.

Watcher: Cloud-Based Coding Activity Tracker for Fair Evaluation of Programming Assignments.

Online learning has made it possible to attend programming classes regardless of the constraint that all students should be gathered in a classroom. However, it has also made it easier for students to cheat on assignments. Therefore, we need a system to deal with cheating on assignments. This study presents a Watcher system, an automated cloud-based software platform for impartial and convenient online programming hands-on education. The primary features of Watcher are as follows. First, Watcher offers a web-based integrated development environment (Web-IDE) that allows students to start programming immediately without the need for additional installation and configuration. Second, Watcher collects and monitors the coding activity of students automatically in real-time. As Watcher provides the history of the coding activity to instructors in log files, the instructors can investigate suspicious coding activities such as plagiarism, even for a short source code. Third, Watcher provides facilities to remotely manage and evaluate students' hands-on programming assignments. We evaluated Watcher in a Unix system programming class for 96 students. The results showed that Watcher improves the quality of the coding experience for students through Web-IDE, and it offers instructors valuable data that can be used to analyze the various coding activities of individual students.

Bitbox: A Cloud-based data sharing solution for medical images.

With the modernization and digitisation of the healthcare system, the need for exchanging medical data has become increasingly compelling. Biomedical imaging has been no exception, where the gathering of medical imaging acquisitions from multi-site collaborations have enabled to reach data sizes never imaginable until few years ago. Usually, medical imaging data have very large volume and diverse complexity, requiring bespoken transfer systems that protect personal information as well as data integrity. Despite many digital innovations, there are still technical and regulatory bottlenecks that make biomedical imaging data exchange challenging. Here we present Bitbox, a web-based application which provides a reliable yet straightforward service to securely exchange medical imaging data. With Bitbox, both imaging and non-imaging data of any type can be transferred from any external and independent site into a centralized server. A showcase of the system will be illustrated for the COVID-19 Clinical Neuroscience Study (COVID-CNS) project, a UK-wide experimental medicine study to investigate the neurological and neuropsychiatric effects of COVID-19 infections in hundreds of patients.

Effectiveness of cloud-based rehabilitation in children with developmental language disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic: A prospective cohort study.

During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, we considered the case of a child with developmental language disorder (DLD) who could not go to the hospital on time to receive timely rehabilitation treatment due to disrupted hospital operations. The application of cloud-based rehabilitation platforms has provided significant advantages and convenience for children with DLD in-home remote rehabilitation. Among them, the JingYun Rehab Cloud Platform is the most widely used in mainland China. It is an interactive telerehabilitation system developed by Weixin Huang that delivers personalized home rehabilitation for special education children. In this study, we used the JingYun Rehab Cloud Platform to investigate the extent to which cloud-based rehabilitation is effective for children with DLD in terms of language and cognitive outcomes. This was a prospective cohort study including all children who were evaluated and diagnosed with DLD through Sign-Significant Relations and were followed up at the rehabilitation clinic of our institute. We followed 162 children with DLD for 3 months, including 84 children with DLD who participated in remote cloud-based rehabilitation on the JingYun Rehab Cloud Platform and 78 children with DLD as the control group who underwent home-based rehabilitation. Language abilities of both groups were assessed using the Chinese version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Several measures of training performance (language, memory, and cognition tasks) were assessed before and after cloud-based rehabilitation in the remote cloud-based rehabilitation group. Children with DLD in the cloud-based rehabilitation group performed significantly better in language abilities, as assessed by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised, than children with DLD in the control group. Furthermore, for children who participated in remote cloud-based rehabilitation, the frequency of training sessions was proportional to their performance on language, memory, and cognition tasks. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of cloud-based rehabilitation on the JingYun Rehab Cloud Platform in treating children with DLD.

Teaching genomics to life science undergraduates using cloud computing platforms with open datasets.

The final year of a biochemistry degree is usually a time to experience research. However, laboratory-based research projects were not possible during COVID-19. Instead, we used open datasets to provide computational research projects in metagenomics to biochemistry undergraduates (80 students with limited computing experience). We aimed to give the students a chance to explore any dataset, rather than use a small number of artificial datasets (~60 published datasets were used). To achieve this, we utilized Google Colaboratory (Colab), a virtual computing environment. Colab was used as a framework to retrieve raw sequencing data (analyzed with QIIME2) and generate visualizations. Setting up the environment requires no prior experience; all students have the same drive structure and notebooks can be shared (for synchronous sessions). We also used the platform to combine multiple datasets, perform a meta-analysis, and allowed the students to analyze large datasets with 1000s of subjects and factors. Projects that required increased computational resources were integrated with Google Cloud Compute. In future, all research projects can include some aspects of reanalyzing public data, providing students with data science experience. Colab is also an excellent environment in which to develop data skills in multiple languages (e.g., Perl, Python, Julia).

Detection of Cardiovascular Disease Based on PPG Signals Using Machine Learning with Cloud Computing.

Hypertension is the main cause of blood pressure (BP), which further causes various cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). The recent COVID-19 pandemic raised the burden on the healthcare system and also limits the resources to these patients only. The treatment of chronic patients, especially those who suffer from CVD, has fallen behind, resulting in increased deaths from CVD around the world. Regular monitoring of BP is crucial to prevent CVDs as it can be controlled and diagnosed through constant monitoring. To find an effective and convenient procedure for the early diagnosis of CVDs, photoplethysmography (PPG) is recognized as a low-cost technology. Through PPG technology, various cardiovascular parameters, including blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, etc., are detected. Merging the healthcare domain with information technology (IT) is a demanding area to reduce the rehospitalization of CVD patients. In the proposed model, PPG signals from the Internet of things (IoT)-enabled wearable patient monitoring (WPM) devices are used to monitor the heart rate (HR), etc., of the patients remotely. This article investigates various machine learning techniques such as decision tree (DT), naïve Bayes (NB), and support vector machine (SVM) and the deep learning model one-dimensional convolutional neural network-long short-term memory (1D CNN-LSTM) to develop a system that assists physicians during continuous monitoring, which achieved an accuracy of 99.5% using PPG-BP data set. The proposed system provides cost-effective, efficient, and fully connected monitoring systems for cardiac patients.

The road to change: Broadband China strategy and enterprise digitization.

The digitization of a company necessitates not only the effort of the company but also state backing of network infrastructure. In this study, we applied the difference-in-differences method to examine the impact of the Broadband China Strategy on corporate digitalization and its heterogeneity using the data from Chinese listed firms from 2010 to 2020. The results show that the improvement in network infrastructure plays a vital role in promoting company digitization; this improvement is extremely varied due to variances in market demand and endowments. Non-state-owned firms, businesses in the eastern area, and technology-intensive businesses have profited the most. Among the five types of digitization, artificial intelligence and cloud computing are top priorities for enterprises. Our findings add to the literature on the spillover effects of broadband construction and the factors affecting enterprise digitalization.

Real-time artificial intelligence based health monitoring, diagnosing and environmental control system for COVID-19 patients.

By upgrading medical facilities with internet of things (IoT), early researchers have produced positive results. Isolated COVID-19 patients in remote areas, where patients are not able to approach a doctor for the detection of routine parameters, are now getting feasible. The doctors and families will be able to track the patient's health outside of the hospital utilizing sensors, cloud storage, data transmission, and IoT mobile applications. The main purpose of the proposed research-based project is to develop a remote health surveillance system utilizing local sensors. The proposed system also provides GSM messages, live location, and send email to the doctor during emergency conditions. Based on artificial intelligence (AI), a feedback action is taken in case of the absence of a doctor, where an automatic injection system injects the dose into the patient's body during an emergency. The significant parameters catering to our project are limited to ECG monitoring, SpO2 level detection, body temperature, and pulse rate measurement. Some parameters will be remotely shown to the doctor via the Blynk application in case of any abrupt change in the parameters. If the doctor is not available, the IoT system will send the location to the emergency team and relatives. In severe conditions, an AI-based system will analyze the parameters and injects the dose.

An Efficient and Secure Data Sharing Method Using Asymmetric Pairing with Shorter Ciphertext to Enable Rapid Learning in Healthcare.

The recent advent of cloud computing provides a flexible way to effectively share data among multiple users. Cloud computing and cryptographic primitives are changing the way of healthcare unprecedentedly by providing real-time data sharing cost-effectively. Sharing various data items from different users to multiple sets of legitimate subscribers in the cloud environment is a challenging issue. The online electronic healthcare system requires multiple data items to be shared by different users for various purposes. In the present scenario, COVID-19 data is sensitive and must be encrypted to ensure data privacy. Secure sharing of such information is crucial. The standard broadcast encryption system is inefficient for this purpose. Multichannel broadcast encryption is a mechanism that enables secure sharing of different messages to different set of users efficiently. We propose an efficient and secure data sharing method with shorter ciphertext in public key setting using asymmetric (Type-III) pairings. The Type-III setting is the most efficient form among all pairing types regarding operations required and security. The semantic security of this method is proven under decisional BDHE complexity assumption without random oracle model.

Perceived Security Risk Based on Moderating Factors for Blockchain Technology Applications in Cloud Storage to Achieve Secure Healthcare Systems.

Due to the high amount of electronic health records, hospitals have prioritized data protection. Because it uses parallel computing and is distributed, the security of the cloud cannot be guaranteed. Because of the large number of e-health records, hospitals have made data security a major concern. The cloud's security cannot be guaranteed because it uses parallel processing and is distributed. The blockchain (BC) has been deployed in the cloud to preserve and secure medical data because it is particularly prone to security breaches and attacks such as forgery, manipulation, and privacy leaks. An overview of blockchain (BC) technology in cloud storage to improve healthcare system security can be obtained by reading this paper. First, we will look at the benefits and drawbacks of using a basic cloud storage system. After that, a brief overview of blockchain cloud storage technology will be offered. Many researches have focused on using blockchain technology in healthcare systems as a possible solution to the security concerns in healthcare, resulting in tighter and more advanced security requirements being provided. This survey could lead to a blockchain-based solution for the protection of cloud-outsourced healthcare data. Evaluation and comparison of the simulation tests of the offered blockchain technology-focused studies can demonstrate integrity verification with cloud storage and medical data, data interchange with reduced computational complexity, security, and privacy protection. Because of blockchain and IT, business warfare has emerged, and governments in the Middle East have embraced it. Thus, this research focused on the qualities that influence customers' interest in and approval of blockchain technology in cloud storage for healthcare system security and the aspects that increase people's knowledge of blockchain. One way to better understand how people feel about learning how to use blockchain technology in healthcare is through the United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). A snowball sampling method was used to select respondents in an online poll to gather data about blockchain technology in Middle Eastern poor countries. A total of 443 randomly selected responses were tested using SPSS. Blockchain adoption has been shown to be influenced by anticipation, effort expectancy, social influence (SI), facilitation factors, personal innovativeness (PInn), and a perception of security risk (PSR). Blockchain adoption and acceptance were found to be influenced by anticipation, effort expectancy, social influence (SI), facilitating conditions, personal innovativeness (PInn), and perceived security risk (PSR) during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as providing an overview of current trends in the field and issues pertaining to significance and compatibility.

Blockchain-based healthcare management system with two-side verifiability.

The lack of data outsourcing in healthcare management systems slows down the intercommunication and information sharing between different entities. A standard solution is outsourcing the electronic health record (EHR) to a cloud service provider (CSP). The outsourcing of the EHR should be performed securely without compromising the CSP functionalities. Searchable encryption would be a viable approach to ensure the confidentiality of the data without compromising searchability and accessibility. However, most existing searchable encryption solutions use centralised architecture. These systems have trust issues as not all the CSPs are fully trusted or honest. To address these problems, we explore blockchain technology with smart contract applications to construct a decentralised system with auditable yet immutable data storage and access. First, we propose a blockchain-based searchable encryption scheme for EHR storage and updates in a decentralised fashion. The proposed scheme supports confidentiality of the outsourced EHR, keyword search functionalities, verifiability of the user and the server, storage immutability, and dynamic updates of EHRs. Next, we implement a prototype using JavaScript and Solidity on the Ethereum platform to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed solution. Finally, we compare the performance and security of the proposed scheme against existing solutions. The result indicates that the proposed scheme is practical while providing the desired security features and functional requirements.

[Design and Development of Cloud Platform of Emergency COVID-19 Nucleic Acid Detection].

According to the characteristics of short time and large amount of samples for out of hospital emergency nucleic acid detection, this study introduces an out of hospital emergency nucleic acid detection cloud platform system, which realizes the functions of rapid identification of the detected person and one-to-one correspondence with the samples, and real-time upload of the detection results to Zhejiang Government service network for quick viewing and statistics, so as to complete the task of national nucleic acid screening efficiently and accurately that we must provide information support.

Front-Line Emergency Department Clinician Acceptability and Use of a Prototype Real-Time Cloud-Based Influenza Surveillance System.

Objectives: To assess emergency department (ED) clinicians' perceptions of a novel real-time influenza surveillance system using a pre- and post-implementation structured survey. Methods: We created and implemented a laboratory-based real-time influenza surveillance system at two EDs at the beginning of the 2013-2014 influenza season. Patients with acute respiratory illness were tested for influenza using rapid PCR-based Cepheid Xpert Flu assay. Results were instantaneously uploaded to a cloud-based data aggregation system made available to clinicians via a web-based dashboard. Clinicians received bimonthly email updates summating year-to-date results. Clinicians were surveyed prior to, and after the influenza season, to assess their views regarding acceptability and utility of the surveillance system data which were shared via dashboard and email updates. Results: The pre-implementation survey revealed that the majority (82%) of the 151 ED clinicians responded that they "sporadically" or "don't," actively seek influenza-related information during the season. However, most (75%) reported that they would find additional information regarding influenza prevalence useful. Following implementation, there was an overall increase in the frequency of clinician self-reporting increased access to surveillance information from 50 to 63%, with the majority (75%) indicating that the surveillance emails impacted their general awareness of influenza. Clinicians reported that the additional real-time surveillance data impacted their testing (65%) and treatment (51%) practices. Conclusions: The majority of ED clinicians found surveillance data useful and indicated the additional information impacted their clinical practice. Accurate and timely surveillance information, distributed in a provider-friendly format could impact ED clinician management of patients with suspected influenza.

Analysis of Job Failure and Prediction Model for Cloud Computing Using Machine Learning.

Modern applications, such as smart cities, home automation, and eHealth, demand a new approach to improve cloud application dependability and availability. Due to the enormous scope and diversity of the cloud environment, most cloud services, including hardware and software, have encountered failures. In this study, we first analyze and characterize the behaviour of failed and completed jobs using publicly accessible traces. We have designed and developed a failure prediction model to determine failed jobs before they occur. The proposed model aims to enhance resource consumption and cloud application efficiency. Based on three publicly available traces: the Google cluster, Mustang, and Trinity, we evaluate the proposed model. In addition, the traces were also subjected to various machine learning models to find the most accurate one. Our results indicate a significant correlation between unsuccessful tasks and requested resources. The evaluation results also revealed that our model has high precision, recall, and F1-score. Several solutions, such as predicting job failure, developing scheduling algorithms, changing priority policies, or limiting re-submission of tasks, can improve the reliability and availability of cloud services.