An important trend in modern medicine is towards individualisation of healthcare to tailor care to the needs of the individual. This makes it possible, for example, to personalise diagnosis and treatment to improve outcome. However, the benefits of this can only be fully realised if healthcare and ICT resources are exploited (e.g. to provide access to relevant data, analysis algorithms, knowledge and expertise). Potentially, grid can play an important role in this by allowing sharing of resources and expertise to improve the quality of care. The integration of grid and the new concept of bioprofile represents a new topic in the healthgrid for individualisation of healthcare. A bioprofile represents a personal dynamic "fingerprint" that fuses together a person's current and past bio-history, biopatterns and prognosis. It combines not just data, but also analysis and predictions of future or likely susceptibility to disease, such as brain diseases and cancer. The creation and use of bioprofile require the support of a number of healthcare and ICT technologies and techniques, such as medical imaging and electrophysiology and related facilities, analysis tools, data storage and computation clusters. The need to share clinical data, storage and computation resources between different bioprofile centres creates not only local problems, but also global problems. Existing ICT technologies are inappropriate for bioprofiling because of the difficulties in the use and management of heterogeneous IT resources at different bioprofile centres. Grid as an emerging resource sharing concept fulfils the needs of bioprofile in several aspects, including discovery, access, monitoring and allocation of distributed bioprofile databases, computation resoiuces, bioprofile knowledge bases, etc. However, the challenge of how to integrate the grid and bioprofile technologies together in order to offer an advanced distributed bioprofile environment to support individualized healthcare remains. The aim of this project is to develop a framework for one of the key meta-level bioprofile applications: bioprofile analysis over grid to support individualised healthcare. Bioprofile analysis is a critical part of bioprofiling (i.e. the creation, use and update of bioprofiles). Analysis makes it possible, for example, to extract markers from data for diagnosis and to assess individual's health status. The framework provides a basis for a "grid-based" solution to the challenge of "distributed bioprofile analysis" in bioprofiling. The main contributions of the thesis are fourfold: A. An architecture for bioprofile analysis over grid. The design of a suitable aichitecture is fundamental to the development of any ICT systems. The architecture creates a meaiis for categorisation, determination and organisation of core grid components to support the development and use of grid for bioprofile analysis; B. A service model for bioprofile analysis over grid. The service model proposes a service design principle, a service architecture for bioprofile analysis over grid, and a distributed EEG analysis service model. The service design principle addresses the main service design considerations behind the service model, in the aspects of usability, flexibility, extensibility, reusability, etc. The service architecture identifies the main categories of services and outlines an approach in organising services to realise certain functionalities required by distributed bioprofile analysis applications. The EEG analysis service model demonstrates the utilisation and development of services to enable bioprofile analysis over grid; C. Two grid test-beds and a practical implementation of EEG analysis over grid. The two grid test-beds: the BIOPATTERN grid and PlymGRID are built based on existing grid middleware tools. They provide essential experimental platforms for research in bioprofiling over grid. The work here demonstrates how resources, grid middleware and services can be utilised, organised and implemented to support distributed EEG analysis for early detection of dementia. The distributed Electroencephalography (EEG) analysis environment can be used to support a variety of research activities in EEG analysis; D. A scheme for organising multiple (heterogeneous) descriptions of individual grid entities for knowledge representation of grid. The scheme solves the compatibility and adaptability problems in managing heterogeneous descriptions (i.e. descriptions using different languages and schemas/ontologies) for collaborated representation of a grid environment in different scales. It underpins the concept of bioprofile analysis over grid in the aspect of knowledge-based global coordination between components of bioprofile analysis over grid.

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This study investigates, within the current health care situation, the interrelationship of the user, resources and tool in the design of a prototype WELLNESS database-driven web site. A shift has taken place in health care, in which the base of conventional medicine has broadened to integrate other systems, practices and worldviews. These include complementary and alternative medicine, health promotion, disease prevention and wellness. Emphasis is placed on the need to take personal responsibility for one's own health and wellness. The global burden of chronic disease, reaching epidemic proportions, is increasingly linked to risk factors resulting from personal lifestyle choices. The growing evidence of the user's need to make personal, informed, lifestyle choices and their reliance on the Web for health information, required investigation. WELLNESS, a specific orientation to health and wellness, formed the framework within which the user and resources were defined and the tool designed. The user was profiled as the WELLNESS health information seeker, hereby contributing significantly to an understanding of the user in this new context. The user profile informed the establishment of resource selection criteria and tool design. The identification of WELLNESS content selection criteria, within a five-dimensional model, was required to ensure quality, relevant and credible resources. The tool is comprised of the WELLNESS thesaurus and WELLNESS database-driven web site. The WELLNESS thesaurus was constructed based on a combination of relevant thesauri. It will be used as an indexing tool. An investigation of existing health information web sites highlighted the importance of designing a specific WELLNESS database-driven web site. A database host was identified against which the original study's conceptual schema was assessed. A low-fidelity prototype web site was designed as the interface between the WELLNESS health information seeker and the database of WELLNESS health information resources. This study has epidemiological, philosophical, epistemological, sociological and psychological relevance. The provision of access to WELLNESS health information resources, made available in the WELLNESS database-driven web site, for personal, informed lifestyle choice by the WELLNESS health information seeker could potentially contribute to the reduction of the global burden of chronic disease. / Information Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

This study investigates, within the current health care situation, the interrelationship of the user, resources and tool in the design of a prototype WELLNESS database-driven web site. A shift has taken place in health care, in which the base of conventional medicine has broadened to integrate other systems, practices and worldviews. These include complementary and alternative medicine, health promotion, disease prevention and wellness. Emphasis is placed on the need to take personal responsibility for one's own health and wellness. The global burden of chronic disease, reaching epidemic proportions, is increasingly linked to risk factors resulting from personal lifestyle choices. The growing evidence of the user's need to make personal, informed, lifestyle choices and their reliance on the Web for health information, required investigation. WELLNESS, a specific orientation to health and wellness, formed the framework within which the user and resources were defined and the tool designed. The user was profiled as the WELLNESS health information seeker, hereby contributing significantly to an understanding of the user in this new context. The user profile informed the establishment of resource selection criteria and tool design. The identification of WELLNESS content selection criteria, within a five-dimensional model, was required to ensure quality, relevant and credible resources. The tool is comprised of the WELLNESS thesaurus and WELLNESS database-driven web site. The WELLNESS thesaurus was constructed based on a combination of relevant thesauri. It will be used as an indexing tool. An investigation of existing health information web sites highlighted the importance of designing a specific WELLNESS database-driven web site. A database host was identified against which the original study's conceptual schema was assessed. A low-fidelity prototype web site was designed as the interface between the WELLNESS health information seeker and the database of WELLNESS health information resources. This study has epidemiological, philosophical, epistemological, sociological and psychological relevance. The provision of access to WELLNESS health information resources, made available in the WELLNESS database-driven web site, for personal, informed lifestyle choice by the WELLNESS health information seeker could potentially contribute to the reduction of the global burden of chronic disease. / Information Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)