System Interoperability and Management – SIM

Technological Activity

The group carries out technological development and applied research activities aimed at the design and implementation of innovative technological platforms and application services, designed to make different IT systems interoperable with each other in an integrated and secure manner. By appropriately combining approaches of Data Interoperability, Machine Learning and Information Security, the group provides solutions capable of facilitating the discovery, interoperability, accessibility and reuse of data present in distributed information systems, in accordance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

The main activities performed by the group are the following:

Design, implementation and verification of architectural models and middleware infrastructures to support interoperability between heterogeneous information systems through Web Services and information management technologies.
Definition of information models for the homogeneous representation of concepts in support of the information retrieval.
Modelling of business processes for the development of enabling technological systems.
Definition and application of techniques for security and privacy, with particular interest in the protection of data and programs through cryptographic and access control mechanisms.
Application and implementation of techniques for the extraction, analysis and classification of information of interest present in large amounts of heterogeneous data, both structured and unstructured, to support decisions.
Identification of decentralized architectural approaches for the tracking and certification of events using blockchain technologies and the use of smart contracts.
Analysis and understanding of supply systems in terms of innovative products and services (state of the art, benchmarking, national and international projects in progress, purposes).
Contribution to the issue of standards and technical regulations in the healthcare IT sector through participation in working groups made up of competent bodies (such as HL7 Italy and UNINFO Commission for Medical Informatics).
Management and maintenance of information systems and ICT services for the Institute.

These activities are carried out through the application of methodological approaches based on Domain Requirements Engineering, Functional Model Definition, Business Process Modeling, Service and Resource-Oriented Architecture, Data Analysis, Authentication, Authorization and Auditing, Resource and Service Virtualization, Software Development and Testing, Verification and Validation.
Particular attention is paid to the definition of models for the interoperability and security of health information systems, such as the Electronic Health Record, through cooperation with the competent Institutions.

Goals

The group’s objectives are the definition, development and validation of innovative technological solutions capable of fostering interoperability between heterogeneous software applications and platforms, in order to facilitate the collection, interchange and understanding of data of different nature, respecting security and privacy requirements.

Interoperability represents a major challenge for modern IT systems, as they are complex, distributed, designed to meet different regulations, based on diverse communication formats and protocols, including third-party components, continuously evolving.
These issues are addressed by identifying architectural approaches based on standards, aimed at supporting domain processes through the use of homogeneous data representations, secure exchange methods, shared interfaces, techniques for intelligent information extraction, access control and event tracing.

Application Fields

Digital Health, Smart Factory, Cultural Heritage.