ENSURE: Long term digital preservation of Health Care, Clinical Trial and Financial data

This paper presents the initial results of the ENSURE (Enabling kNowledge Sustainability, Usability and Recovery for Economic value) project, which focuses on the challenges associated with the long-term preservation of data produced by organisations in the health care, clinical trials and financial sectors. In particular the project has looked at the economic implications of long-term preservation for business, how to maintain the accessibility and confidentiality of sensitive information in a changing environment, and how to detect and respond to such environmental changes. The project has developed a prototype system, which is based around a lifecycle manager and makes use of ontologies to identify and trigger necessary transformations of the data objects in order to ensure their long-term usability. It also uses cloud technology for its flexibility, expansibility, and low start-up costs. This paper presents one of the use cases: the health care as a way to illustrate some of the challenges addressed by the ENSURE system.