Content-Centric Networking Applications For Medical Devices and Healthcare Management Systems DISCUSSION DOCUMENT JULY 2012. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com
Executive Summary This is a proposition for the design and deployment of a communication platform for medical devices and healthcare management systems based on PARC s Content-Centric Networking (CCN) technology. It includes use case scenarios and innovation propositions for medical device and healthcare provisioning companies. 1. Introduction Personal wellness, remote health monitoring, and assisted living are growing healthcare markets that are expanding the use of mobile devices and services that can securely record, store, and share personal healthcare data. Smartphones and tablets are increasing in both consumer and healthcare sectors and there are thousands of medical and healthcare applications available. Consumers, healthcare providers, medical equipment vendors, and physicians are recognizing the benefits of mobile healthcare devices and services to monitor and share patient vitals with physicians, to provide personal access to aggregated health information, and to use in emergency response situations where there is limited access to infrastructure. However, these devices, systems, and applications also present challenges around ensuring privacy and security, connecting multiple heterogeneous devices, and aggregating and sharing information. Such obstacles hinder the usability and deployment of solutions using existing networking technologies. Instead of piecing together network components and security services or segmenting infrastructure and information, we argue there is a clear need to develop a secure unified communication platform for access, storage, and transmission of health and wellness data. 2. About Content-Centric Networking (CCN) CCN is an alternative approach to the networking architecture based on the principle that a communication network should allow a user to focus on the data he or she needs, rather than having to reference a specific, physical location from where that data is to be retrieved. CCN enables content caching to reduce congestion and improve delivery speed, a simpler configuration of network devices, and building security into the network at the data level. The initiative continues to gain momentum with an open source code release, Android implementation release, commercial engagements with prominent industrial partners, government funding for a multi-institution project, and the CCN community meeting recently hosted at PARC. 3. Strategic Vision CCN enables secure, infrastructure-independent, easy-to-manage communication between medical devices for personal use and point-of-care access. The CCN platform, with its strong security and device association and configurability, is the ideal architecture for infrastructure-less emergency settings because it does not rely on a traditional client-server model. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com page 2
Some specific benefits of CCN technology include: Plug and Play Device Communication The intuitive device association enables configuration of medical devices that can communicate with each other to efficiently share and transport data. CCN-based enrollment and device association mechanisms allow for intuitive pairing, configuration, and set up of multiple devices. Trust and Security The data-centric security model enables secure sharing of sensitive content. CCN s security model is focused on securing the content itself, as opposed to endpoints. Regardless of where the packets travel across the network, content is protected. This fundamental protection does not prevent the use of additional security measures (i.e., encrypted transmission between sites to meet regulatory requirements). Scalable Dissemination CCN s fully distributed architecture eliminates single points of failure and centralized bottlenecks by moving away from traditional client-server architectures and focusing on content as the means of communication. Utilizing the storage and communication capabilities on heterogeneous devices enables scalable dissemination and propagation to provide a platform for health and wellness data, not only for the users, but also approved providers and partners. Healthcare Data and Access Management CCN s approach to healthcare information management is not constrained to a single device repository and does not require deploying complicated infrastructure for centralized health records servers. CCN s fundamental properties not only allow applications and services to operate on mobile devices, but excel at utilizing their mobility and limited resources. This new platform allows health and wellness data to be personalized for privacy and access control, allowing for different views of the data to different groups or categories (e.g., friends, family, physicians) through CCN encryption methods. Information can be shared through pre-established links, such as daily health summaries going to a relative, or through opportunistic links, such as an in-person medical examination at a doctor s office. 4. Potential Initiatives and Use Cases Here are some potential initiatives and use cases for CCN with medical devices and healthcare management systems. Further details of the implementation and additional use cases can be outlined with a potential partner company once goals and objectives are aligned. A unified communications platform for mobile medical devices and healthcare management systems CCN-based technologies allow medical devices to wirelessly enroll, share, and access sensitive content securely without the need for deployed infrastructure or backend systems support. Using CCN s data-centric cryptographic methods, health and wellness data can be shared securely with privacy levels defined and set by the user or provider. CCN s highly usable enrollment procedures can be applied to multiple medical device types. The protocol-agnostic communication model of CCN enables the building of a low-cost communication platform for a set of heterogeneous devices. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com page 3
Use cases include: A newly acquired medical device, such as a blood pressure monitor, can configure itself to pair and synchronize with other devices such as a patient s or nurse s smartphone or tablet. This use case can also be generalized to alternative devices and settings. A user can privately monitor her weight as part of personal wellness routine, share the cholesterol level securely with the clinic, and make her fitness routine available to her friends. CCN s cryptographic methods enable applications and systems to create interfaces to define and implement privacy levels and secure sharing of personal device data. When connected, CCN enabled services and devices are able to disseminate personal health records as appropriate. For example, while at home on their network or in the doctor s office, a patient s mobile device can seamlessly transmit data collected using medical devices to the provider s backend storage service without configuration or explicitly connecting to the service. A user can have secure access to all her health records whether at home, at work, or on the move. Wellness data can be transmitted to a partner or healthcare provider that does not use the provider s platform. Emergency Response Scenarios CCN-based secure data sharing without the reliance on dedicated support infrastructure enables new products and services for emergency response scenarios. A CCN-enabled emergency response device can be used on a patient to collect and synchronize data as tests are performed with an emergency caregiver s device. The data can also be synchronized with an attendant s tablet or other devices in an ambulance and (optionally) with a backend database. The device can disseminate the data securely as the ambulance arrives at the hospital to deliver all the vitals to the doctor in charge. The data can also facilitate a patient s admission by having the patient s credentials or insurance information retrieved and integrated with the pertinent information from providers. The data sharing remains secure and free from the danger of a privacy breach. Federal regulations are easily incorporated for communication between devices; they are simply an added layer of protection around the secured content transmissions. 5. CCN Differentiation CCN s healthcare information management approach differentiates products by providing benefits that are either impossible to realize today, or require complicated networks, systems, and configurations. CCN s architecture and supporting libraries reduce development and deployment costs by working with general, multi-user and heterogeneous devices. CCN s properties make it trivial to secure and share data between devices, allowing monitoring systems at clinics, home and on personal mobile devices. This approach leaves the patient in control of their information while enabling flexible information sharing. Patient and doctors can share historic data when the patient visits their doctor without requiring a cloud-based infrastructure. Alerts can be defined by a doctor and accepted by a patient, then sent to the doctor as needed based on an explicit pairing between the two, facilitating easy, confidential sharing. Caregiver and family relationships securely define those roles. Systems and applications built on CCN can also be customized to user needs. Federal regulations can be used to guide data ownership and protection while opening up access to approved parties with secured enrollment and access control. Usability for both the owner of the data, and those who need access to it is of extremely high importance. With CCN as the underlying architecture, one can be sure that the data in the system is correct, unmodified and protected, all while allowing it to naturally flow where it is needed. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com page 4
6. An Opportunity for Joint Innovation PARC welcomes collaborators to develop services and systems leveraging CCN and its unique benefits for health information management.ccn enables the collection, storage, and trusted sharing of personal information with strong access control for pre-established relationships and ad hoc needs. Specific examples of innovation may include: A person-centric trust model for ehealth information, specifically how users and health providers express identity and how the system uses those trust relationships for information sharing and aggregation. Exploring how core CCN technologies, like identity and access control by encryption, could be applied for healthcare information management. This would lead to innovations in existing information management and dissemination systems. Collecting and disseminating medical device data aggregated on multiple devices without centralized services, including accessing same-patient data records collected via multiple sources such as in-home monitors and doctor s office visits. Lightweight pairing, authentication, revocation, and secure data sharing over open wireless ISM broadcast channels. A content-oriented paradigm for restricted data views and summarization with access control by encryption. Ethnographic study of personal mobile health usage leading to consumer-friendly device designs and interfaces that solve real-world problems. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com page 5
Next Steps Over the years, PARC has developed a roadmap for defining projects in a way that maximizes the likelihood of success. Status Step Outcomes PARC Introductions If Client believes further exploration is warranted, select one to - Business Model three areas to focus on for further exploration - Technology Opportunities Overview of Client s Strategic Interests and Current Capabilities Project Formulation Validation Detailed Proposal Development Contract Development Program Delivery Client provides overview of strategic priorities, internal capabilities/resources. PARC and Client determine areas for further investigation. PARC and Client s internal stakeholders design ways to address Client s strategic priorities. Usually includes technical and business case development. Executives at both Client and PARC agree that the direction outlined is of mutual interest. Although there is no commitment to enter into a contract, each company s executives have reviewed the high-level project and commit to further development of the proposal. Client and PARC team members refine a detailed Statement of Work to achieve desired business results. This includes development of mutually acceptable terms and conditions. After the business and technical parameters have been established, PARC translates these into a Project Agreement for legal review. Once both parties have signed the Project Agreement, senior technical staff of each organization will lead the work at PARC and at the Client. PARC, a Xerox company, is in The Business of Breakthroughs. Practicing open innovation, we provide custom R&D services, technology, expertise, best practices, and IP to global Fortune 500 and Global 1000 companies, startups, and government agency partners. We create new business options, accelerate time to market, augment internal capabilities, and reduce risk for our clients. 2012 Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. PARC, the PARC logo and The Business of Breakthroughs are service marks of Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. PARC, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, California 94304 USA +1 650 812 4000 engage@parc.com www.parc.com page 6