Data dissemination strategies for mobile peer-to-peer information systems with applications to healthcare

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture is becoming increasingly popular for various applications, replacing the classical Client-Server architecture. With the enhanced capabilities of mobile devices (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) wireless networks started to take advantage of P2P paradigm along with its properties like infrastructure-free operation, scalability, balanced and distributed workload. Mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) networks refer to the application of P2P architecture over wireless networks. Problems about dissemination of data in both P2P and MP2P networks are widely studied, and there are many proposed solutions. Healthcare information systems are helping clinicians to hold the information belonging to patients and diseases, and to communicate with each other since early 1950s. Today, they are widely used in hospitals, being constructed using Client-Server network architecture. Wireless technologies are also applied to medical domain, especially for monitoring purposes. In this thesis, we present and evaluate various data dissemination strategies to work on a mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) network designed for a medical healthcare environment. First, the designed network system is presented along with the network topology. Then, the proposed data dissemination strategies are described. And finally, these strategies are evaluated according to the properties and needs of a medical system.