Healthgrid Applications and Core Technologies

Book excerpt: This book presents the proceedings of HealthGrid 2010, the latest in the annual open forum for the integration of grid technologies, e science and e health methods and their application in biomedicine and healthcare. Previous conferences have highlighted the need to involve all actors, such as physicians, scientists and technologists, and have served to demonstrate the usefulness of grids to potential application domains, at least at the prototype level. More recently, cloud computing seems set to make an impact as a paradigm more readily acceptable in the practice of healthcare informatics, whilst grids may remain the infrastructure of choice for researchers. Included in this volume are the 19 papers selected after review from 42 original submissions for full presentation at the 2010 conference. Additional papers, presented as posters at the conference, are reproduced here in shorter form. The book has four sections: section one contains four papers under the broad heading of `Socio Economic Aspects and Accessibility', section two: `Future of Grids, Core Technologies & Data Integration', consists of nine papers and section three comprises a further six papers covering `Applications'. Section four includes the `Poster Extended Abstracts'. Of interest to grid middleware and healthgrid application developers, ethicists, security experts and policy makers as well as all users of biomedical and health informatics, this book provides an overview of current trends and developments in this increasingly important field of healthcare.