iMASH: Adaptive Middleware and Networking Support for the Nomadic Healer

研究人员预计，在未来几年内，移动和无线上网很可能成为常态，而不是像今天看到的例外。该提案描述了开发和部署iMASH的计划，iMASH是一个网络系统，支持在任何平台上随时随地访问医疗保健提供者的电子病历数据库。目标是提供实时、多媒体通信的能力，以便医生可以在移动中访问由医生的用户配置文件过滤的患者记录和其他相关信息，并且可以将正在进行的应用会话无缝地迁移到不同的平台，从医生办公室的高性能诊断工作站到检查室的手持pda。虽然提议的技术是通用的，并扩展到一系列移动应用程序，但这个项目的具体目标是医疗保健应用程序。为此，研究人员将开发一个临床试验台，它将作为一个实验室，用于开发、测试和评估患者护理方面的先进信息技术。该试验台将提供驱动iMASH架构设计的用户需求，并将允许对研究结果进行直接、现实的验证。研究人员希望通过这项研究和开发工作做出以下贡献：1)开发中间件基础设施，支持在任何时间、任何地点、任何平台上访问互联网2)一套无线网络协议和算法，为移动、异构网络环境3)在加州大学洛杉矶分校医学院部署iMASH，并进行一项对照研究，以评估其在降低医疗成本和提高医生效率方面的有效性4)系统仿真功能，可用于评估中间件服务和协议的性能和可伸缩性，这些服务和协议跨越多个维度，包括用户数量、设备数量、应用程序类型和地理区域。该模拟器将用于在物理测试平台上部署之前“测试驱动”新的协议和应用程序。研究人员已经组建了一支强大的研发团队来承担iMASH的工作。该团队在网络（Zhang, Gerla）、无线通信（Gerla, Lu）、并行和分布式系统（Bagrodia, Gerla）、绩效评估（Bagrodia）、计算机医学（Valentino, McCoy）、改善医疗保健的技术创新临床评估（Fiske）和校园计算和通信技术（Solomon）等相关领域拥有必要的专业知识。这项工作的长期目标是在加州大学洛杉矶分校校园内广泛部署类似imash的技术，以支持学生和教师无处不在的多媒体访问，并支持无线远程教育。为了实现适当的技术转型，该团队还包括来自大学管理部门的两名关键成员：医学院的首席信息官（McCoy）和负责校园电信的行政服务副校长（Solomon）。加州大学洛杉矶分校医院最近投入10亿美元进行历史重建。重建的一个组成部分是在医院内提供完整的无线连接。加州大学洛杉矶分校还参与了一个项目，升级整个校园的网络连接，目的是在校园内任意两个位置提供桌面到桌面的至少10Mbps带宽。通过无线连接进一步增强这种能力的计划正在进行中。这两项技术倡议提供了一个独特的机会，将iMASH技术在加州大学洛杉矶分校校园内广泛使用，并随后推广到其他地方。

The researchers envision that within the next few years mobile and wireless access to the Internet will very likely become the norm, rather than the exception as is seen today. This proposal describes the plans to develop and deploy iMASH, a network system that supports anytime, anywhere, on any platform access to the electronic patient records database for healthcare providers. The objective is to provide the capability for real-time, multimedia communication, so that a physician may access, on the move, the patients record and other relevant information as filtered by the physician's user profile, and may migrate ongoing application sessions seamlessly to different platforms that range from a high performance diagnostic workstation in the physician's office to hand held PDAs in the examination room. While the proposed techniques are general and extend to a range of mobile applications, the specific target of this project is healthcare applications. To this end, the researchers will develop a clinical testbed, which will serve as a laboratory for developing, testing, and evaluating advanced information technology in the context of patient care. The testbed will provide the user requirements to drive the iMASH architecture design, and will permit direct, realistic validation of the research results. The researchers expect to make the following contributions from this research and development effort: 1) Development of a middleware infrastructure that provides support for anytime, anywhere, on any platform access to the Internet 2) A suite of wireless networking protocols and algorithms that provide quality of service support in a mobile, heterogeneous networking environment 3) A deployment of iMASH within the UCLA Medial School and a controlled study to evaluate its effectiveness in reducing healthcare costs and improving physician effectiveness 4) A system emulation capability that can be used to evaluate the performance and scalability of the middleware services and protocols across multiple dimensions including number of users, number of devices, types of applications, and geographical area. The emulator will be used to 'test drive' novel protocols and applications prior to deployment on the physical testbed. The researchers have assembled a strong research and development team to undertake the iMASH effort. The team possesses the necessary expertise in the related areas of networking (Zhang, Gerla), wireless communications (Gerla, Lu), parallel and distributed systems (Bagrodia, Gerla), performance evaluation (Bagrodia), computerized medicine (Valentino, McCoy), clinical evaluation of technological innovations in improving heath care (Fiske), and campus computing and communication technology (Solomon). A longer term goal of this effort is to deploy iMASH-like technology widely within the UCLA campus to support ubiquitous multimedia access for students and faculty, and to support wireless distance education. To enable appropriate technology transition, the team also includes two key members from the university administration: the CIO for the medical school (McCoy) and the Associate Vice-chancellor of Administrative Services with line responsibility over campus telecommunications (Solomon). The UCLA Hospital has recently embarked on a historical reconstruction with a $1 billion endowment. An integral part of the reconstruction is availability of complete wireless connectivity within the hospital. The UCLA campus is also engaged in a project to upgrade the network connectivity throughout the campus with the aim of providing a minimum of 10Mbps bandwidth from desktop to desktop within any two locations on campus. Planning is underway to further enhance this capability with wireless connectivity. These two technology initiatives provide a unique opportunity to insert the iMASH technology in widespread use within the UCLA campus, and subsequently to other locations.