Utilising programmable infrastructures is a promising approach to support secure data-sharing across healthcare domains of different capabilities in terms of network and security. The EPI1(Enabling Personalised Interventions) framework automates the setup of the underlying infrastructure while considering different requirements communicated by the EPI components, such as logic area generator and policy management system.In our approach to dynamically provide collaborative environments, we containerise network functions (VFs), that are shipped out and instantiated at the edge of the network. We use container-based Virtual Network Function (VNFs) to accomplish fast deployment, high reusability, and low-performance overhead.Traffic interception and redirection through the chain of containerised network functions is a core feature of our framework. In this paper, we focus on the implementation and design of this tool for packet interception and redirection. We evaluate the performance of two approaches: an NGINX-based reverse proxy method and a SOCKS protocol-based method. We benchmark them to determine the overhead compared to a direct data-sharing session with no proxy. We conclude that the reverse proxy performs better in terms of overhead. Nonetheless, the SOCKS-based method works on a lower network level support all traffic types and offer a higher processing rate. We compare the methods according to other performance parameters. Subsequently, the choice of method will depend on the application performance requirements.

Regardless of the context and rationale, running distributed applications on geographically dispersed IT resources often comes with various technical and organizational challenges. If not addressed appropriately, these challenges may impede development, and in turn, scientific and business innovation. We have developed the Brane framework to support implementers in addressing these challenges. Brane utilizes containerization to encapsulate functionalities as portable building blocks. Through programmability, application orchestration can be expressed using an intuitive domain-specific language. As a result, end-users with limited programming experience are empowered to compose applications by themselves, without having to deal with the underlying technical details. They can do this from user-friendly interactive notebooks. In this paper, we introduce Brane, describe its components and features, and validate the framework with an implementation of a real-world scientific use case.

Privacy considerations obligate careful and secure processing of personal data. This is especially true when personal data is linked against databases from other organizations. During such endeavours, privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) can be utilized to prevent needless exposure of sensitive information to other organizations. With the increase of personal data that is being gathered and analyzed, scalable PPRL capable of handling massive databases is much desired. In this work, we evaluate Apache Spark as an option to scale PPRL. Not only is it valuable to have a scalable PPRL implementation, but one based on the Spark would also be commonly deployable and could take advantage of further development of the ecosystem. Our results show that a PPRL solution based on Spark outperforms alternatives when it comes to handling multiple millions of records; can scale to dozens of nodes; and is on-par with regular record linkage implementations in terms of achieved results.

Applications and infrastructures are increasingly becoming more complex. Infrastructures have several layers of virtualisation, programmability and management while scientific applications are diverse in their computing model archetypes. Mapping these two opposing ends of the stack is a non-trivial task. Here we propose a new programming paradigm and architecture that takes into account the different layers of the stack in an effort to create isolated, portable and scalable application micro-infrastructures.