1st Keynote Speaker:
Carol Cosgrove-Sacks
Senior Advisor on International Standards Policy, OASIS
Title:
OPEN STANDARDS FOR AN INTERNET OF THINGS FOR HEALTHCARE
Abstract:
Interoperability is a core requirement for the IoT, especially in the health sector. Like the Internet of computation before it, the Internet of things will grow, not from a sole supplier's design, but from the interactions of a heterogeneous field of devices and sensors that report and cooperate, using shared open protocols that any maker can employ. The demand for widely reusable data is becoming even more acute, as patients assert control over their own health information; OASIS open standards will play an increasingly important role in facilitating eHealth, and assuring patients regarding security and the protection of their access rights and identity.
Open standards, both for the content of data and for methods of data exchange, increasingly are a key requirement of both systems and regulators. Open standards and open source software both are proliferating in healthcare, serving the same fundamental goals: open access to participation; development transparency; and widespread, unconditional availability. These qualities make "open" work more readily usable, adaptable, evaluable and auditable. Those lower barriers permit more rapid growth of large, loosely-coupled networks of cooperating devices from diverse sources throughout the medical sector and allied industries where interoperability is essential.
Within the world of the IoT, the resulting explosion of interoperating objects -- including an increasingly vast range of medical devices and human-wearable monitors -- will generate tremendous increases in the amount and depth of data collected, and the volume of transactional interactions processed. These will radically raise demand for more powerful fine-grained data access control and security; reliable, automated privacy protections; widely-extensible unique identifiers; and lightweight transactional protocols that can talk to many different simple devices. OASIS projects are addressing each of these emerging imperatives.
Bio:
Carol Cosgrove-Sacks, Ph.D ([email protected]), since 2005 the Senior Advisor on International Standards Policy, represents OASIS to European and international organizations, the business community and NGOs. She contributes to promoting the policy relevance and visibility of OASIS in international processes and assists with OASIS strategic business development. She represents OASIS at the EU high-level Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardization.
The Internet of Things and its associated standardization challenges have been the subject for two major presentations by Dr Cosgrove-Sacks to government and industry representatives at meetings of the UN International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, in 2014.
She was formerly a Director in the United Nations (1994-2005), where she was responsible for managing support to the UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and E-Business [UN/CEFACT], including the management of UN/EDIFACT and the development of ebXML and the UN electronic documents set. She launched and organized the annual UN forums on international trade facilitation and e-business and the programme on Internet enterprise development. She has participated in many international taskforces to define the policy and strategic context for e-business tools in a wide variety of sectors, including the ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS, the UN ICT Taskforce, the OECD Working Group on e-Commerce, and was the global coordinator for the UN Regional Commissions for the World Summits on the Information Society (WSIS), 2003 to 2005.
She is also a Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges, and travels frequently to Brussels. She is a regular public speaker, particularly about international trade logistics, e-business and e-government. Her credentials include a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in economics and a Ph.D. in international trade development. She is based in Geneva and speaks English, French and German.
