A Quantitative Reputation Model for Healthcare Services Availability in Cloud Computing

摘要

The growth of Telemedicine or virtual care is expected to explode in coming years as many researchers predict in the coming years, lesser need for face-to-face interaction with doctors and more demand for access to patient records regardless of time and location. Therefore, Telemedicine will become commonplace relying on new modes of patient interactions of which cloud computing will have a vital role. Telemedicine based cloud computing services need to be evaluated on Quality of Services (QoS) concerns, especially on availability as a non-available Telemedicine service may lead to human life critical condition. To this end, a continuous evaluation of relevant QoS properties is highly desirable, and leads to building their reputation. Many cloud reputation evaluation models exist, most of which are based on subjective grading of QoS properties, or are qualitative in nature. Such models are highly prone to subjective biases. Hence, there is a need of an objective reputation model of Telemedicine services, which can estimate service levels over time without human biases. This paper presents analysis for such a quantitative reputation model. Results reflect on the evolution of reputation over time. It is significant for tentative service subscribers as it guides them for selection of a Telemedicine based cloud service provider.