Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute – Security Portlets (OMII-SP) project focused on supporting fine grained security of portals exploiting Shibboleth access to and usage of e-Resources available within those portals. Through development of tailored JSR-168 compliant portlets supporting the scoping, release and recognition of digitally signed security attributes, fine-grained policies on access and usage of portal contents was achieved. A paper describing the outputs of OMII-SP is given here.

Dynamic Virtual Organisations for e-Science Education (DyVOSE): explored advanced security infrastructures for e-Science education. DyVOSE showed how advanced authorization infrastructures could be seamlessly linked to a range of e-Resources, and importantly how such security infrastructures could be dynamically established and rolled out on a federated virtual organisation basis (without assuming a centralized authorization service model as per other efforts). This is much aligned with scalable e-Research models. Through this model we were able to dynamically establish fine-grained security driven virtual organizations, which allow for example to address licensing issues and protection of Intellectual Property. A paper describing the outputs of DyVOSE is given here.

GLASgow university early adoption of Shibboleth (GLASS): was concerned with the exploration and uptake of Shibboleth technologies across the university of Glasgow, building upon a unified institutional account management system. A key focus of GLASS was exploring Shibboleth technologies in a Grid environment and numerous scenarios were explored showing how advanced authorisation infrastructures could be seamlessly linked in forming trusted federations including access to and usage of brain trauma data sets at Glasgow Southern General Hospital and a range of e-learning scenarios. A paper describing the outputs of GLASS is given here.

Endocrine Genomics Virtual Laboratory (endoVL) was funded ($1.03m) in 2013 by the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) project. The project established a range of targeted disease registries associated with rare diseases (Disorders of Sex Development, Niemann-Pick types A, B and C, Adrenal Tumours, Alstrom, Wolfram, Bardet Biedl and Atypical Femur Fractures); more common disorders such as type-1 diabetes; a range of clinical trials and integrated genomic data processing pipelines on the Cloud. The endoVL project has provided the basis for a range of new grants and activities such as MGHA, AGHA and ENDIA. It has also provided demonstrations for how large-scale genomic data processing on the Cloud can be achieved, whilst recognising the sensitivities in information governance associated with genomic data. Example publications from endoVL on the project as a whole are given here, whilst the Cloud security solutions are outlined here.

Diagnosing Parkinson’s Disease by neuromuscular function evaluation (DiPAR): this €1.7M EU funded project began in 2011 and developed a pen/tablet based system that could be used by researchers to detect the early onset of Parkinsons disease through algorithms trained to detect indicative neuromuscular tremors. The project worked with a range of health care providers in undertaking this activity, including research nurses, specialised clinics and a range of neurological centres.

AlstromUk: focused on establishing a clinical research environment to support both the clinical and associated research communities working in better understanding Alstrom Syndrome. A key aspect of this work was developing an infrastructure that supports wider outreach to the parents and guardians of Alstrom patients.

DSDnetwork: This proof of concept project developed a clinical framework to co-ordinate efforts into disorders of sex development across Australasia. This work included establishment of appropriate databases and secure portal based access to a range of clinical and genetic information on DSD patients. It leveraged much of the EuroDSD work.

Scottish Family Health Study (SHFS) was funded (£4.6M) for 5 years by the Scottish Executive and Chief Scientist Office, Scotland. SHFS recognized that medical disorders of public health importance have a significant heritable component. The focus of SFHS included cancer, heart disease/stroke and mental health as well as a wide range of poorly managed or currently untreatable cases of ill health including asthma, bone fracture, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity and osteoporosis. SFHS focused on bringing together existing and complementary strengths in Scotland in the arena of genetics as applied to healthcare.

Scottish Health Informatics Platform for Research (SHIP): was funded (£3.5m) by the Wellcome Trust and the MRC in the UK. SHIP provided an e-Infrastructure across Scotland where access to clinical data for secondary uses was enabled. This infrastructure addressed increased public concern over privacy and more regulatory oversight of data provenance. The SHIP project culminated in the development of a significant clinical studies toolkit, a patient portal and image handling capacity as well as support for a generic infrastructure that allowed record linkage of anonymised national NHS datasets given appropriate permissions, and with vigorous, visible (overt) information governance.

Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) was funded (£2.8m) by the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the UK. The VOTES project investigated the application of Grid technologies to the clinical trial and epidemiological domains. Specifically VOTES focused upon: patient recruitment, data collection and study management aspects of clinical trials and epidemiological studies. As widely recognised, the clinical trials domain is a particularly challenging one in that potentially overlapping, dynamically varying, geographically distributed, heterogeneous groups of people, resources and data sets need to come together for given trials. In particular the virtual organisations for clinical trials have very strict security requirements on the data sets, the resources (DBs etc), who is allowed to see, use them, in what context etc. A paper describing the output of VOTES is given here.