=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper95
|storemode=property
|title=Cross-Border e-Government Authentication Services
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper95.pdf
|volume=Vol-2030
|authors=Alexandros B. Sideridis,Konstantina Costopoulou,Costas P. Yialouris,Ioannis Savvas,Michael Maliappis,Maria Ntaliani,Sotiris Karetsos,Stergios Tsiafoulis,Loucas Protopappas,Andreas Chatziandreou
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/SideridisCYSMNK17
}}
==Cross-Border e-Government Authentication Services==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper95.pdf
Cross-Border e-Government Authentication Services
Alexandros B. Sideridis(1), Elias Pimenidis(2), Konstantina Costopoulou(1), Costas P.
Yialouris(1) Maria Ntaliani(1), Ioannis Savvas(3), Michael Maliappis(1), Sotiris
Karetsos(1), Stergios Tsiafoulis(4), Loucas Protopappas(1), Andreas Chatziandreou(5)
(1)
AUA, GR, {as, tina, yialouris, michael, ntaliani, karetsos, lprotopappas}@aua.gr
(2)
UWE, UK, elias.pimenidis@uwe.ac.uk
(3)
Admin of Macedonia-Thrace, GR, jsav@aua.gr
(4)
ydmed, GR, s. tsiafoulis@dmed.gov.gr
(5)
UoP, GR, xatziandreoy@gmail.com
Abstract. Recent advances in technology have made possible the
implementation of e-Government services to citizens, businesses and public
agencies, facilitating cross-border transactions and necessitating the transfer of
confidential and personal data. Such services require the efficient validation of
data through authentication. Recently, the European Commission provided to
the Authorities of Member States the appropriate regulation and systems for
cross-border transactions. Literature review shows that there is an increasing
interest in such systems for health, social services, agriculture, and life
sciences in general. This article proposes cross-border authentication services
through three specific case studies. The eminency of the respective services
mainly lies to the fact that they are secure, easy-to-use and authenticated,
circulating confidential and personal data, through public agencies of European
member states. These services use cloud computing technology fighting the
incompatibility of diverge environments and thus facilitating the provision of
primary health care services, the mobility of European citizens and legitimate
refugees and the authentication of agricultural farmers around the European
Union.
Keywords: e-Government systems, Authentication, Electronic Identification,
Cloud Computing, Health Care, Refugees’ Mobility, Farmers.
1 Introduction
Few decades ago, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) complex
applications have been implemented to eliminate manual work in areas of continued
globalization, such as e-commerce, e-banking, e-health, e-justice, e-forensics and e-
crime. The availability of e-government mixed (automated and manual) models,
capable of meeting complex requirements (e.g. security), extended global research
activity to new areas, such as e-agriculture, e-environment, e-forestry, and logistics.
Benefited stakeholders include public agencies, food companies, agricultural
organizations and enterprises, farmers, and citizens and businesses in general.
Recently, innovative e-government applications are aiming to fully automate public
services by removing administrative burdens and improving time response from
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Government to Citizens (G2C) and Government to Business (G2B). Automation,
integrity and time efficiency of relative services, necessitate the implementation of
supporting administrative Government to Government (G2G) services necessary for
the implementation of the previously mentioned G2C and G2B services.
Recently, e-government systems had already come at an unpresentenced rate.
Sideridis et al. (2015) state that national and local governments need further
integration of e-government systems for "enhancing citizens’ daily activities and
creating the appropriate basis in public administrations for the development of
knowledge based economies". ICT innovations, like cloud computing, Big Data and
Internet of Things (IoT), were incorporated to the appropriate structures of complex
e-government systems, extending existing e-government services, or designing new
ones. Developments through European Commission (EC) projects have made
possible the use of secure, easy-to-use and authenticated e-transactions exchanging
confidential and personal data in urgent activities, such as citizens’ mobility and
products logistics and transportation. To this end, since October 2016, developed
platforms of e-AUthentication (e-AU), e-SIGNature (e-SIGN) and e-IDentification
(e-ID) were publicly available to Member States of the European Union (EU)
[STORK 1.0 (a,b,c), 2016 and STORK 2.0 (a,b,c), 2016]. Based on these platforms,
Sideridis and Protopappas (2015) have proposed e-government services using cloud-
computing technology to support Smart Cross Border e-Government (SCBeG)
systems. Using SCBeG systems is a promising solution for the secure exchange of
sensitive data among public agencies, businesses and citizens for cross-border G2C,
G2B and G2G services. Also, latest developments in SCBeG systems encourage
further research and attention for the implementation of the appropriate models and
services of direct and immediate need. Such case is the development of systems for
expanding business frontiers or/and facilitating legitimate movement of citizens between the
EU Member States (Sideridis et al., 2017).
In this article, three indicative examples are proposed from health, social and
agricultural sectors. Specifically, the first example illustrated supports health services
capable of meeting the requirements of any European citizen (European Union,
2011), (European Patients, 2016) crying for primary health care help and treatment's
arrangement, as he/she is moving around the EU, regardless his/her state of origin.
Due to the very sensitive nature of personal health data, medical records, files and
information regarding specific examinations and tests, SCBeG system should be
based on high level security e-AU, e-SIGN and e-ID platforms, such as those
provided by the European project STORK. Thus, e-government primary health care
services will be provided to any citizen of the EU during his mobility to any Member
State without the obstacle of the unavailability of his medical files. The importance
of such services is evident, particularly in cases of emergency and need of immediate
medical attention (Tauber et al., 2012).
The second example presented in this paper aims to support services of legitimate
mobility of non- European citizens to the Member States of the EU. In particular, the
main G2C service, provided by the SCBeG system, concerns refugees’ mobility, i.e.
to the effective management of the movement of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi
refugees across Europe. This service allows accurate registration of refugees, data
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authentication and their identification for any future movement across the EU
according to the decision of Heads of States or Governments in the relevant Summits
of March the 7th and 18th, 2016, in Brussels (European Council a, 2016). At the
same time, refugees’ identification will allow them to be issued a work permit and to
establish themselves legally in accordance to the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to
the Status of Refugees, their rights and the legal obligations of Member States. This
problem necessitates immediate action and therefore, the proposed in this paper
SCBeG system is of immense urgency and importance.
The third example describes farmers’ cross-border authentication services.
Recently, an EU pilot for authentication services to farmers has estimated that digital
certificates for farmers could save 400 hours a year in time needed to complete the
application, and that such services can reduce cross-border administrative burdens
for farmers and public agencies (G2B and G2C), provide easy digital access to a
wide spectrum of documents and services, simplify login process for foreign farmers,
as well as reduce time, effort and cost for foreign users (e-SENS, 2017a; 2017b).
Also, authentication services, can contribute to the agri-market integration across
Member States, since the EU agri-food sector is quite problematic regarding cross-
border barriers for trading, due to food quality and safety. In this context, an
agricultural e-service authentication process concerning EU farmers is described.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 describes the three examples
for authenticating cross-border electronic transactions in health, social services and
agriculture. In section 3, the architecture, functionality and implementation of the
SCBeG system is presented. This system supports the implementation of the services
proposed in the aforementioned examples. Discussion follows in section 4 where, at
the same time, an attempt is made to encourage researchers to participate in similar
projects and stimulate further ideas, discussions and implementations.
2 Application Areas
2.1 Primary Health Care Services
Primary Health Care in most of the EU Member States is usually provided by Local
Community Health Centres (LCHC). The medical personnel of a LCHC usually
employs general practitioners as family doctors and, in most of the cases, specialists
covering the basic medical doctor's specialties. LCHCs are functioning under the
umbrella of integrated National Public Health Care (NPHC) systems. In absence of
LCHC's services, or even if complementary to them, private enterprises, usually
called Diagnostic Centres (DCs) are filling the gap (a DC is consisting of a number
of medical doctors of the basic specialties forming a consortium). In urban areas and
cities patients are usually directly addressing to Outpatient Departments or, in case of
emergency, the Emergency Units of nearby Hospitals. All health organizations
(LCHCs, DCs, hospitals etc.) are accommodated under the umbrella of the respective
NPHC system.
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In all cases above, by this first aid step health service provision, patients are
locally treated or guided to secondary and tertiary care in accordance with a
diagnosis made by health professionals of the above units. Patients are so addressed
in allied health professions chiropractic, physicians, physician associates, dentistry,
midwifery, nursing, medicine, optometry, pharmacy, psychology etc. Prior and
during the actual patient's guidance, a "front-office primary health care service",
apart from being capable to decide who the appropriate addressee is by checking his
social security number and verifying identity data, it should also provide to him
patient's medical record and file. Then, the specialist, or any health advisor acting as
the addressee, should be able to properly advice, treat or redirect his/her patient as
appropriate.
Recently, a Greek initiative aiming at automating the front-office service offered
so far to patients by the administration of LCHCs manually (Yialouris and
Chatziandreou, 2017) has been established. This initiative implements a simple e-
government service alleviating administrative burden of both administration and
patient, and accelerating the decision process of the actors (patient-administrator-
specialist) and the final outcome (diagnosis, treatment or guidance for help outside
the LCHC). In other words, the service under development suggests to patients the
selection of the appropriate specialist arranges the appointment with him/her in
accordance to his/her availability and carries out the necessary transfer of patient’s
medical record. There is a number of legal and technical issues to be carefully
considered, like the proper consideration of medical record’s upgrading by eligible
persons, as well as the capability of DCs to directly upload to patient’s medical file
their examination results.
The implementation of the above described e-Government front-office primary
health care service to patients looking for a proper advice and treatment in LCHC or
any other similar organization, is expected to be ready and put into practice, for a
pilot period of six months, by spring, 2018. In summary, according to this G2C
service, when a European citizen or any other legitimate person of Member State A
or MS A, is moving to MS B, should be offered health care services in a more
efficient and direct way while his medical file will be available to authorised
personnel. Steps followed are shown in Fig. 1 where:
• Any authorized user of the MS A can access a protected resource (medical
file) from the MS B through the NPHC system.
• The system forwards the request to the Cross-Border Authentication
System.
• If the authentication is valid then the medical file of the specific individual
is accessed in the MS B NPHC system.
• Consequently, the medical file is sent to the MS A's authorized user.
During the first stages of implementing the e-Government front-office primary
health care service described above, a question was raised with regard to system's
commitment to provide such a service in case of a patient's mobility to a different EU
country or, even if elsewhere, than that of his/her own state of origin. SCBeG
systems providing such services seem to present the appropriate basis in also dealing
with "cross-border front-office primary health care services" of a kind such that
described above (Sideridis et al., 2015). Security issues and strict national law with
regard medical record’s sensitive personal data, authentication of data, final patient’s
853
identification and more general interoperability problems are very effort consuming
problems under serious consideration. Obviously, e-government services
necessitating merge of heterogeneous computer environments, as those of different
states needed to cooperate in offering primary health care services to European
citizens moving around the EU, will face difficult interoperability problems. Cloud
computing incorporation will elevate and adequately help (Sideridis et al., 2017).
Fig. 1 Medical File Authentication Process in Primary Health Care
2.2 Mobility services
Security and privacy are key enablers of SCBeG systems while one of their main
objectives is to provide secure citizen mobility by utilizing state-of-the-art tools and
models to deliver a safe environment for transactions and movement across EU
member states using the existing platforms on e-AU and e-SIGN. STORK 2.0 has
implemented successfully e-ID. Thus, the proposed systems could significantly
support the authorities, utilizing national e-IDs, to monitor the transactions of any
854
citizen and authorized personnel, under improved security measures and enhanced
capabilities of Cloud Computing (Sideridis et al., 2017).
Recently, efforts are made in creating interoperable environments and satisfying
requirements for G2G, G2B and/or B2B models of operation. Respective
applications will mostly benefit Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and this will
contribute to combat unemployment (free movement of young people without the
burden of bureaucratic restrictions and full use of e-ID). Similar systems strengthen
the foundation of the authors’ proposal for the implementation of an e-government
system to support the effective management of legitimate movement of thousands of
Syrian and Iraqi refugees across Europe, entitled “REfugees MObility e-
Government” (REMOGO) system (Sideridis et al., 2017). Services offered by
REMOGO allow accurate registration of refugees, data authentication and their
identification for any future movement between the EU countries according to the
decision of Heads of States or Governments in the relevant Summits of March the
7th and 18th, 2016, in Brussels (European Commission a, 2016). At the same time,
authentic refugee's identification will allow them to be issued a work permit and to
establish themselves legally. This problem necessitates immediate action and
therefore, the proposed SCBeG system is of immense urgency and importance.
Figure 2 illustrates the authentication process of a refugee using the REMOGO
system.
Fig. 2 Authentication Process by REMOGO system
In general, SCBeG systems will be able to capture, analyze and authenticate cost
effectively, constantly changing (due to mobility) data, just in time with streaming
computing. Confidence should be built in the ability to integrate, understand, manage
and govern these massive data, stored in various devices and public organizations
across the globe, in a proper way throughout its lifecycle. Big Data platforms fit
better than any other platform available for the management and processes of such
data. Certain limitations resulting from the use of Big Data, like the five key
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elements of Big Data platforms used (high volume, high velocity, high variety, high
complexity and high variability) should be dealt with the use of certain smart
efficiency tests of capture analysis, data curation, sharing etc.
2.3 Farmers’ Authentication Services
The increased demand for high-quality, safe, and eco-friendly products comprises a
great challenge for the food industry that activates in a dynamic, globalized and
complex supply chain environment. Till today, full transparency has not been
achieved for cross-border and global food supply chains, where it is vital for
stakeholders (e.g. farmers) and consumers to be able to have access to consistent,
complete, accurate and timely food quality tracking and tracing information (Xu et
al., 2014). EU is the world's largest exporter of food and drink products, the second
largest importer, and the leading exporter of processed agricultural products. Still, the
EU food and drink industry faces problems in the supply chain regarding
transparency, lack of attractiveness for skilled workers and low market integration
across member states. (European Commission, 2017a; 2017b). Specially, according
to Egan and Guimarães (2017) the agri-food sector is the most problematic regarding
cross-border barriers for trade, resulting from national differences concerning food
quality and safety among Member States. In particular, Italy, France, Germany, and
Greece account for 64 percent of the barriers in the agri-food sector. Seamless
authentication is one of EU priorities for improving cross-border interoperability. In
order to ensure cross-border mobility, transparency and visibility, which are critical
to ensure food safety and quality, cross-border authentication services for farmers are
proposed.
In particular, this example describes a process for the authentication of EU
farmers, who wish to log in foreign agricultural public agency portals. This can be
achieved using the eIDAS approach (Lenz and Zwattendorfer, 2016). Specifically,
the main objective of the proposed process is the connection of a farmer from MS A
to MS B for accessing an online service (e.g. applying for subsidy, registration of
cattle). Steps followed are shown in Fig. 3 where:
• The farmer visits the agricultural e-service web portal and tries to log in
using eIDAS credentials acquired from MS A (1).
• The agricultural e-service web portal redirects the farmer to his/her
national eIDAS node, through the local eIDAS node for authentication
(2,3).
• The national eIDAS node accepts farmer’s credentials and returns to the
agricultural e-service web portal the required attributes (4).
• The agricultural e-service web portal allows farmer access to digital
services (5).
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MS A MS B
4
National 3 Local 2 Agricultural
eIDAS eIDAS eService
node node web portal
5 1 1
Farmer
from MS A
Fig. 3 Agricultural e-service web portal authentication process
3 The SCBeG model
3.1 The architecture
A SCBeG system is actually a Decision Support System (DSS) comprising of three
structural blocks: The I/O, the Validation-Authentication-Identification (VAI) and
Processing blocks. The whole authentication process, and part of the I/O block, is
based on smart, machine learning, comparing, curing and checking data procedures.
These smart items added to the full decision-making process are enough to
characterize a SCBeG system as a smart system based on clear decision-making
methods, procedures and the cloud computing technology and Big Data. The VAI
block provides additional capabilities in authenticating personal and sensitive data.
Obviously, a fundamental part of the VAI block consists of the platforms developed
by STORK 2.0 project. These platforms include two identity models: The Pan-
European Proxy Services (PEPS) & MiddleWare (MW) models (Fig. 4). It is noted
that these models are based on established international standards, such as OASIS
web SSO, ISO/IEC 27001, and OASIS DSS (Sideridis et al., 2017).
The authentication process is actually performed in two steps:
(a) Data submitted are collected by the system using various validity tests and/with
data available from original sources. In most cases, this is the most difficult step,
857
since original sources may not be available or, if there are any, may be of
questionable validity;
(b) Authentication is performed, among public/local agencies or any other local
supervising organisation of the service provided, both at citizen's State or enterprise’s
origin and the State in connection abroad. During this step, and in particular its
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model should also be added to the system computer
resources (software, hardware, servers) over the Internet. Public, local
administrations and any third party are providers to the system. They should not only
host the appropriate user's applications and personal files for testing but they should
also handle maintenance, backup and upgrading services. Policy based services and
automation of administrative tasks should also be main tasks of this IaaS.
The Processing block of the SCBeG system includes the appropriate Databases
and a DSS mechanism while, two-way links exist with the VAI block. Subsequently,
e-ID platforms and required programmes facilitate Interoperability Solutions for
European Public Administration (ISA), Connect European Facility (CEF) and
guarantee availability of e-ID as a trust Service (IDaaS) (European Commission
a,b,c,d) 2016]. Actually the EC, in an attempt to encourage Member States to extent
their services with cross border functionalities, launched through the CEF
programme the Digital Single Web Portal, where all needed information on Building
Blocks (BB) can be found. The service required is an e-ID of citizens, businesses
(natural or legal persons) and public servants by authenticating themselves in order to
be authorized and gain access to protected resources by verifying in a secure, reliable
and trusted way their identity and/or their role. STORK1.0 provided the first e-ID BB
while STORK2.0 extended it by demonstrating the capability of the provision of
additional attributes by trusted Attribute Providers (AP). All the structural blocks of
the above platforms, in combination with the appropriate BB of cloud computing and
Big Data, are strengthening and transform the proposed cross-border tool in an
integrated SCBeG system.
3.2 The functionality
While STORK 1.0 & STORK 2.0 offered the first e-ID BB solution along with a
software reference implementation, the EC covered the needs on legal
interoperability by introducing the EU Regulation No 910/2014 (European
Parliament and the Council of the European Union, 2014a) on "Electronic
identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market
(eIDAS Regulation)" that repeals the Directive 1999/93/EC (Signature Directive).
The Regulation, which has been adopted in July 2014 by the EU, provides the
legislative and the regulatory framework for the creation of an appropriate
environment, in which citizens, businesses and public administrations can interact
securely, promoting and strengthening cross-border authentication. Key points of the
Regulation are the mandatory cross-border recognition of the authentication schemes
of all the Member States in public administration services, the provision of trusted
services without cost and the association of the already existing authentication
schemes with pre-established assurance Levels of Authentication (LoA). For the
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determination of the LoA of an electronic authentication scheme, organizational and
technical aspects of the authentication procedure are taken into account. These
concern both the phases of registration and of the online authentication process that
compose the authentication scheme. Table 1 describes the four-scaled STORK
Quality Assurance Authentication (QAA) levels have been considered on the
determination of the eIDAS LoA. Every transaction shall make available, on request,
the user’s level of quality of the authentication in order to enable each Services
Provider to decide whether the conditions are met, so as to provide the electronic
service.
Table 1. STORK QAA / eIDAS LoA
STORK QAA eIDAS Description
levels
1 - No or little credibility
2 Low Low reliability
3 Substantial An important credibility
4 High High reliability
The regulation is also taking into account the STORK 1.0 & STORK 2.0 e-ID
Interoperability Framework established during the implementation of these projects.
The framework is consisting of several national nodes acting as Pan-European Proxy
Services (PEPS) or MiddleWares (MW Solution - VIDP) depending on the
architectural solution that has been followed by the MSs (STORK 1.0 b; STORK 2.0
c). The main objectives of these nodes are to conceal the complexity of the national
systems and to be a link of confidence for the creation of a Circle of Trust in Europe.
Moreover, these nodes have to guarantee scalability, since any change within a
member state should be transparent to the other member states.
The identification and authentication processes are based on message exchanging
using the appropriate implementation profiles and technical specifications provided
by STORK projects. The messages include personal and technical attributes. Details
on the profiles, protocols and technical specifications used are beyond the scope of
this paper and are omitted. By digitally signing the requesting and receiving
assertions the requestor or sender are being authenticated, ensuring the integrity of
the exchanged assertions.
Figure 4 demonstrates a STORK 2.0 scenario where the user from MS A needs to
be authenticated to a Service Provider (SP) established in MS B. In this scenario,
both the MSs where the SP is established and the MS of origin of the user, use PEPS
architecture. In accordance with specific scenarios PEPS could act as Citizen's PEPS
(C-PEPS) or as Service PEPS (S-PEPS). In a domestic use case PEPS is acting as C-
PEPS and S-PEPS also. In this scenario the PEPS of MS A is acting as C-PEPS
while PEPS in MS B (service provider) as S-PEPS. The C-PEPS of MS A and the S-
PEPS of MS B have a trusted relation by sharing their digital certificates. The same
applies between S-PEPS and the SP.
The SP supports cross border authentication through STORK 2.0 and provides
the user with the ability to choose that option. The user authenticates himself through
859
his national PEPS. PEPS always ask for the user’s consent before transferring his
personal data to the SP. The consent is asked so as the authentication process to be in
compliance with the “Data Protection Directive” (European Parliament and the
Council of the European Union, 2014a). If more than identity attributes are needed,
the user will be asked to choose the source of the attributes, in some cases
authenticate again to the source, and give his explicit permission to relay them to the
service provider.
The authentication process is as follows:
• The user wishes to access a protected resource of the SP (1);
• The SP forwards the outcome of the authentication process to the
corresponding S-PEPS (2);
• The S-PEPS forwards the outcome of the authentication process to the
relevant C-PEPS (3) of the country of origin of the user;
• The authentication of the user takes place through C-PEPS to a national
Identity Provider (IDP) (4,7);
• User authenticates himself to the chosen IDP (5,6);
• C-PEPS may retrieve (with the consent of the user) additional identification
information or attributes from an AP (8);
• User authentication and identification information is transferred from the C-
PEPS of country A to S-PEPS of country B (9) with the consent of the user;
• Finally, S-PEPS forwards this information to the service provider (10);
• The user has access to the requested resource.
The procedure is the same in case of using eIDAS nodes instead of PEPS ones.
Fig. 4 Cross Border Authentication through STORK 2.0
860
Cross border authentication is expected to increase the effectiveness of public and
private online services, e-transportation, e-logistics, e-business and e-commerce in
the EU.
4 Discussion
Integration and connection of national e-ID infrastructures, necessary for the type of
systems like those proposed recently is still faced with reservation and remains an
open issue although five years (Tauber et al., 2012) have passed already since their
first trial of implementation. Actually, it was Austria's first attempt to take the
challenge to deploy national e-ID modules in online processes by creating the legal
basis for acceptance of foreign e-ID. This attempt has proved to be very successful
and has managed, during its deployment, to satisfy several national legal
requirements, which had to be taken into account. By now, according to the Austrian
law, foreign citizens are registered in the so-called supplementary register by the
means of qualified certificates and are treated equally like local residents. A similar
approach using direct registries merge rather than creating supplementary ones has
been adopted in this work.
Recently proposed e-government systems, combined with the results of the
STORK 2.0 project, have contributed significantly to the implementation of
innovative and reliable cross-border e-services, which enhance the improvement of
the daily life of European citizens, increase the transparency of electronic
transactions and ultimately contribute to the further development of the EU internal
market. These e-services, coupled with the latest emerging technologies, e.g. e-
identification, are "equipped" with supplementary security protection to face a
potential online attack for the loss of personal data.
It is obvious that full implementation of the above systems is still a difficult task.
Still, they will bring many benefits in key areas, such as health, social services and
agriculture. Although they have often been so far criticized for their poor
contribution to efficiency and transparency in service provision (Pimenidis and
Georgiadis, 2014; Pimenidis et al., 2011), recent advances promise successful
implementation results. The proposed applications like the cross-border primary
health care system can fill the gap in cross-border environment when a European
citizen moves among the EU Member States and needs immediate health care. The
need to improve the way of health care delivery and the recovery of the medical
history of the patient is critical, as any possible delays in the delivery of the required
treatment can be disastrous. Although the EU has laid the foundations at a technical
level through the STORK project and its individual pilots, and similar systems
appear a few years back, the important advantage of our proposed system is that the
medical history of a patient will always be up to date and readily recoverable at any
level of care (primary, Secondary and tertiary). The primary health care service can
be quite demanding in its implementation as there are too many legal aspects that still
need to be taken into account and must reassure a high level of safety as medical data
are predominantly sensitive and have often been a target of online attacks.
861
Given the urgency of the business situations and daily life events presented in the
three indicative cases, the previous experience and the state of the art technologies
available from existing research outputs and extensive pilot studies by EU, research
groups are encouraged to join in and actively participate in numerous EU
programmes.
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