Uniform Interfaces for Healthcare Data Access Federation

Healthcare data is generated and stored by various devices, often physically distributed, with a strong need for privacy. While applications can be custom-built to access data from these diverse sources, big data middleware can provide integrated interfaces for such data sources, avoiding repeated custom-code development. High-performance interfaces are essential for healthcare data access while adopting best practices governing the security, data privacy, and access control. These include user authentication, data authorization, role-based access control, and audit mechanisms to avoid compromising the security standards mandated by data providers. This paper presents a middleware framework for unified healthcare data access, federating data sources, and providing uniform REST interfaces. We evaluate its performance and functionality, featuring its extensibility and modular architecture with illustrative use cases.