Mohammed Ali

Although there have been remarkable technological developments in healthcare, the privacy and security of mobile health systems (mHealth) still raise many concerns with considerable consequences for patients using these technologies. For instance, potential security and privacy threats in wireless devices, such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected to a patient hub at the application, middleware and sensory layers, may result in the disclosure of private and sensitive data. This paper explores the security and privacy of the patient hub, including patient applications and their connections to sensors and cloud technology. Addressing the privacy and security concerns of the patient hub called for a comprehensive risk assessment by using the OCTAVE risk assessment framework. Findings reveal that the highest risk concerned data exposure at the sensory layer. In spite of the countermeasures presented in this paper, most served as a means to identify risk early as opposed to mitigating them. The findings can serve to inform users of the potential vulnerabilities in the patient hub before they arise.

The arrival of new technologies has opened a window of opportunity for UK higher education institutions. Although UK Higher education (HE) has recently become a huge phenomenon owing to an increase in students attending University, many UK universities are not investing enough in technology to facilitate teaching, management and research practices that aim to improve the student experience. This paper discusses the potential for an information system solution, which can facilitate the institutional practices in UK HEIs from multiple stakeholder perspectives. An existing system employed at a UK University known as “MyPGR” was evaluated in order to shed some light on the existing technical problems UK Universities are currently facing, with the support of a soft systems approach (CATWOE). The proposed solution is the Educational-Monitoring-and-Progression-as-a-Service (EMPaaS), which is based on the Cloud Computing model. EMPaaS has the potential to monitor student progression and key milestones relating to their PGR programme, in addition to enabling students to use free cloud applications to keep track of milestones and progressions. The highly accessible and flexible nature of cloud applications adds to the cost-effectiveness of adopting cloud services, which in turn frees up additional funds for UK Universities to pursue other important investments.