Content searching and downloading are the two dominant actions of the Internet users today, despite the fact that the Internet was not originally architected to serve such actions. Content Centric Networking is the new trend in the research community to build network architectures that route content by name and not by the host's network address so as to efficiently deal with content persistence, availability and authenticity issues. In this work we propose an extension to the Content Centric Network protocol in order to support content search as a native process of the network. By using object descriptors to represent the actual content objects and integrate these descriptors in the network protocol we manage to search and retrieve content from the network not only by name but also by the content itself. In this approach, searching for information is a process distributed to the reachable network. Moreover, content aggregation is handled by the end user and not by content aggregation portals, thematic content search engines or information curators. By doing so, search is not any more an application but part of the network and can pave the way for many novel applications which have never been thought until today.

The present paper describes methods for the design of both synchronous and asynchronous computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) procedures suitable for the medical application area and specifically for the purpose of medical teleconsultation and remote diagnosis support. The experimental implementation of a CSCW system built upon a PC/Windows platform is detailed as an example of a low-cost system suitable for adoption in a wide range of medical teleconsultation applications.

The maturing of telecommunication technologies has ushered a whole new era of applications and services in the health care environment. Teleworking, teleconsultation, multimedia conferencing and medical data distribution are rapidly becoming commonplace in clinical practice. As a result, a set of problems arises, concerning data confidentiality and integrity. Public computer networks, such as the emerging ISDN technology, are vulnerable to eavesdropping. Therefore it is important for telemedicine applications to employ end-to-end encryption mechanisms securing the data channel from unauthorised access or modification. We propose a network access and encryption system that is both economical and easily implemented for integration in developing or existing applications, using well-known and thoroughly tested encryption algorithms. Public-key cryptography is used for session-key exchange, while symmetric algorithms are used for bulk encryption. Mechanisms for session-key generation and exchange are also provided.