Using a cloud-centric middleware to enable mobile hosting of Web services: MHealth use case

The unceasing growth and divergence of the mobile landscape have led to the use of smartphone and tablet devices in consuming Web services (WS) in enterprises. However, in heterogeneous WS, the shift from the mobile client consumer approach to the mobile service hosting approach is insufficiently studied. With the advancement of storage and processing capabilities of these devices, coupled with the high availability of the Web, this research focuses on the use of the mobile devices as hosts of WS in a mHealth domain. In this paper, a cloud-centric middleware technique is employed to enable access to the mobile hosts. The paper presents mobile hosting of medical data which are modeled as light-weight WS which is deployed in a real-world system. Further, a workflow authorization model is proposed to ensure privacy and the prevention of unauthorized modification of data on the mobile hosts. A data encryption technique is also put forward to enforce security and privacy of the mobile hosted data. Our current implemented project, called SOPHRA, supports mobile communication over HTTP in a Wi-Fi environment.