Data sharing ecosystem for AAL technology and the development of standards, guidelines, and certifications

Doctor in a background and several data sources in the front

Topic 1 - The Active Assisted Living Landscape in Canada Insights for standards, policies, and governance

UbiLab is working on a study to understand what Active/Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) or IoT for Healthcare technology companies are using as policy guidelines and standards in the creation of their products and services. Ultimately, this study will highlight the gap between what is currently available for innovators in terms of data security, privacy and encryption, and what should be developed to ensure that AAL technology is designed to ensure benefits to patients and the healthcare system through safe technologies.

The long-term goal of this project is the development of a framework of requirements and infrastructure  to enable IoT, mHealth, and wearable data integration, with a focus on  describing the design, data exchange requirements, policy and governance guidelines, and general standards for implementation of  a data infrastructure within Canada.

In addition, the project will explore how new and innovative technologies, like distributed ledger technology (DLT) and blockchain, can integrate with AAL and health IoT data to provide quality healthcare services and outcomes. The scope will include exploring health data collection, storage and organizing strategies, as well as data security and privacy concerns.

Topic 2 - Privacy Agreement

Privacy Agreements (PAs)contain critical information for users about what is being done with their data, who has access to the data, and who is responsible for keeping them safe and secure; and is a common tool used by companies to inform the users of their rights. Due to the length of these documents, users rarely read it in its entirety and therefore lose important details about the contract.

UbiLab is working with CSA group to provide users with more direct access and visual representation of the most important information existing in PAs and the Terms and Conditions (TC) by highlighting the most important information as a summary section in the front of the agreement, as well as incorporating a diagram representing critical insights. The findings from this initiative will be integrated into future standards developed by the CSA Group.

Topic 3 - Blockchain in healthcare

This project will focus on data security, studying applications of Blockchain in the healthcare industry. Standards in the areas of blockchain and homomorphic encryption, the adaptation of FIHR protocols for AAL technology, IoT data encryption, etc., will be derived from this initiative in the form of seed documents for future standards. A Blockchain prototype for consent management will be developed as a use case.

Last updated: March 11, 2020