IEEE Internet Policy Newsletter - May 2017

Health Informatics Standardization and the e-Health Sector: Part One

by Tahir Hameed, Ph.D.
SolBridge International School of Business, Daejeon, South Korea

Although clinical information systems, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), digitized diagnostics, telemedicine, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and self-trackers are becoming an integral part of healthcare planning and delivery, the healthcare sector has been late in exploiting the potential of these e-health systems, especially for cost reduction and patients’ and their caretakers’ convenience^[1-3].

Just imagine, a patient does his medical tests at one of the best hospitals in the town but he moves to another city. Upon visiting a top medical center at the new location, he is told to do all the tests again because interoperability make it impossible for the medical center’s e-health systems to read his previous health records. The patient may incur additional costs for the same procedure or lab test, which not only causes inconveniences to the patient but also causes duplicate payments to providers.

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Bringing New Technologies to Developing Countries: Ride-Hailing Apps as a Use Case

by Syed Hassan Ahmed, Member IEEE, and Muhammad Toaha Raza Khan, IEEE Student Member

The open source Software Development Kits (SDKs) have opened markets for young developers and engineers to develop various mobile apps and start businesses from small to large scales.  In the recent past, we have witnessed an enormous growth in the development of mobile applications in the automation industries. In one way or another, those applications are proven to be a major source of income and provide good quality services with less to invest as a customer. A few of the many examples are ride-hailing apps like Uber, Lyft, and Careem^[1]. These applications have changed the way of commuting within cities^[2]. The main idea was to let users (drivers) use their cars to give rides throughout their cities to the other users (riders)^{[3] [4]}; while these applications play the role of intermediate parties to assure the good Quality of Service and Experience^[5]. To this end, everything seems perfect and in order. However, when it comes to implementing these applications on the real ground basis, it was never a straight task. Especially when companies are trying to establish their businesses in developing countries. In this article, we overview the possible constraints faced by Uber company in general and point out the constraints when Uber moved to developing countries, such as Pakistan.

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Role of Telemedicine in Developed and Under-Developed Countries

by Farhan Khan MD, Fizah Sajjad Chaudhary MD, Muhammad Nadeem Yousaf MD and Syed Ahmad Chan Bukhari PhD

The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) defines telemedicine as the medical information exchange from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients’ health status^[1]. The term “telehealth” is closely associated with telemedicine and used to encompass a broader definition of remote healthcare that does not involve clinical services. The innovative idea of telemedicine may have existed centuries ago, however, Thomas Bird was the first one to introduce the term “telemedicine” in the 1970s^[1]. Before the advent of the internet, telephone was the mainstay for sharing medical information in the 20^th century^[1]. Telemedicine, eHealth, eGovernment, eCommerce and eLearning are now part of 21^st century life. It is about placing citizens in the epicenter to simplify, improve and facilitate their interactions with the healthcare personnel and this facility has the potential to transform healthcare infrastructure.  

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Internet of Threats and Context Aware Security: Part Two

by Junaid Chaudhry, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia; Ahmed Ibrahim, Security Research Institute, Edith Cowan University; Ali Kashif Bashir

In part one of this two-part article, we discussed fundamental issues with the Internet of Things (IoT). In this article, we present some of the technical issues with the IoT that could prove as the downfall of the IoT.

It is said the attack on Dyn was the cyber-attack that almost broke the internet into numerous islands on 21 October 2016, and is the largest one observed yet^[1]. Dyn is an organization that has both capacity and capability to process high volumes of data; it was an asynchronous yet persistent attack that flooded the Domain Name Servers at Dyn Inc.