An open ID enabled and secured web GIS based disease reporting and surveillance system | |
| Author | Asif, Muhammad |
| Call Number | AIT Diss. no.CS-12-04 |
| Subject(s) | Public health--Geographic information systems Geographic information systems World Wide Web |
| Note | A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science, School of Engineering and Technology |
| Publisher | Asian Institute of Technology |
| Series Statement | Dissertation ; no. CS-12-04 |
| Abstract | Internet is an integral part of our society due to its increasing popularity, from on-line surfing to e-commerce to interactive chatting. The nearly ubiquitous access to the Internet and interactive content of the World Wide Web (WWW) have made them a powerful means for people to access, exchange, and process information. Many applications in journalism, sciences, publishing and other fields have been changed by and adapted for use on the Internet. In the same way, the Internet has changed the way to access, share and manipulates GIS data and processing. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) plays a crucial role to help public health organizations in making decisions and understanding population health. To improve understanding of community health needs, and design efficient interventions of an organization, the powerful tools and solutions that GIS technology brings to the desktop, are widely used. GIS technology provides variety of solutions considering ones that meliorate field data collection and reporting, and other that improve disease surveillance and analysis with online mapping and spatial statistics. The ocular product of GIS i.e. maps, have the ability to communicate a health situation, such as environmental contamination, to decision makers. Technologically the use of GIS through the Internet is a new development. In order to use the Web-based geospatial applications efficiently, new standards and challenges are created due to the significant increase in use of the Internet. Among other conditions these challenges are data files size, spatial scale, data transmission and compression, for the wide use of GIS fuctionality. In case of public health applications, geospatial databases developed for the web should have additional requirements to (α) insure the security of individual's information from disclosure. For the analysis and visualization of complex geospatial data, use of GIS and web technologies provide opportunities for the public health decision makers and the public to read understand and solve their problems easily. Before the deployment of Internet, Public health and other government agencies used to have data "stovepipes" or data storage silos. Excluding the most knowledgeable users, it was quite difficult for other to access the data, especially geographic or geospatial data. This stovepipe legacy has broken down by the introduction of Internet. To develop and access geospatial information with lowest cost and to accelerate the transformation at the highest level of policy making is essential for the successful operation of government and the nation. In the meanwhile internet is quite vulnerable to different type of attacks e.g. Phishing session hijacking etc. and to place the personal health record (PHR) online can be quite undesirable in terms of information disclosure. The most polemical issue for PHRs is the privacy of patient information, while using the technology. Nowadays Network computer break-ins are more common, therefore to store medical information online can avoke fear of the exposure of health information to unreliable users. Our medical records often expose very sensitive information about our physical body, in addition to height, weight, blood pressure and other quantitative information. For example, emotional and psychological disorders, fertility, sexual behavior and STDs, abortions, physical abuse, etc. Such information must be kept private to protect patients from social embarrassment, prejudice, inadequate insurability and unfair job opportunities. Maintaining confidentiality and security of public health data is a priority across all public health programs. Internet-GIS is progressively used in organizations of health in order to visualize and share the georeferenced health data through the internet. In the development of a disease surveillance and information system user authentication and data publishing have vital concerns. This dissertation introduces and evaluates new security protocols for single sign on web applications using modern concepts of OpenID. Authentication in web based system has to do with ensuring that the identity of a users cannot be forged or altered. Hence, authentication focuses on the verification of the identity of users of public health data. Simply, the identities of users of Public health surveillance system must be true and verifiable, where as authorization in these system means ensuring that e-health data can be accessed only by authorized users. With the help of Single Sign on concept implemented in this dissertation public health officials and decision makers can easily interact with multiple servers and services with only one time authentication with a modern light weight protocol OpenID implemented in this study. A prototype system have been implemented in this study for online disease reporting and surveillance which is very useful for public health officials and decision makers for real time health surveillance with the help of Internet GIS and Open Source Software's (OSS) in order to protect the morbidity and mortality rate in the area of interest. The prototype system is capable of collecting the data from participating institutes and health care centers through client applications. In this study we have implemented two types of data collection techniques i.e. through desktop client interface and a mobile client for disease data collection. This system is capable of displaying the disease patterns and trends on the basis of very simple user queries. This system provides separate interfaces of disease trend monitoring on the basis of weekly, monthly and yearly. Cumulative disease trends with respect to several years and multiple disease are of utmost importance for public health officials for analyzing the trends in past years. One of the components in our system is capable of generating the cumulative trends for several years, for one and more than one disease. This component is very useful to analyze the relationship among several diseases and years |
| Year | 2012 |
| Corresponding Series Added Entry | Asian Institute of Technology. Dissertation ; no. CS-12-04 |
| Type | Dissertation |
| School | School of Engineering and Technology (SET) |
| Department | Department of Information and Communications Technologies (DICT) |
| Academic Program/FoS | Computer Science (CS) |
| Chairperson(s) | Tripathi, Nitin K.; |
| Examination Committee(s) | Duboz Raphael;Taravudh Tipdecho;Mansor, Shattri Bin; |
| Scholarship Donor(s) | Higher Education Commission (HEC), Pakistan;Asian Institute of Technology Fellowship; |
| Degree | Thesis (Ph.D.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2012 |