Practical Experience of Grid-enabled Health Computing with the GEMSS Grid

GEMSS (Grid Enabled Medical Simulation Services) is an EU funded project (IST-2001-37153) designed to evaluate the viability of Grid computing in the health sector. This paper provides a brief overview of technical aspects of the GEMSS Grid and presents our practical experience of implementing and running a radiosurgery Grid enabled application in the GEMSS environment. Consideration of Grid accessibility, reliability and compute performance is discussed. Additionally, it has become clear that it is also important to engender confidence in the software application through validation exercises, and some results are presented. The sensitive nature of the health data being processed demands that security is given the highest priority, whilst the time critical nature of such applications demands a robust and accessible computing environment. The economics of Grid provision are less clear, but both client and Grid provider require a transparent and well defined business model. The health context imposes particular constraints on Grid infrastructure design, and this has been incorporated within GEMSS since its inception. The features it provides makes the radiosurgery application feasible and ensures that the Grid can be a viable model for other compute intensive health applications, offering a cost effective computational resource for demanding health applications in the 21st century