Telecare and Telemedicine services are a technology-based replacement for in-homecare services provided primarily to the elderly and consumers recovering from certain ailments. While these services are mostly successful in the pilot stages they tend to fail in real life settings. One major reason for this failure may be attributed to security issues associated with these services. This research attempts to identify the various Telecare/Telemedicine-related areas whose security issues need to be addressed. The research looks at the work conducted in the field and the issues still to be addressed.

Multiple granularities are essential to extract significant knowledge from spatiotemporal datasets at different levels of detail. They enable to zoom-in and zoom-out spatio-temporal datasets, thus enhancing the data modelling flexibility and improving the analysis of information. In this paper we discuss effective solutions to implementation issues arising when a data model and a query language are enriched with spatio-temporal multigranularity. We propose appropriate representations for space and time dimensions, granularities, granules, and multi-granular values. In particular the design of granularities and their relationships is illustrated with respect to the application of multigranular conversions for data access. Finally, we describe how multigranular spatio-temporal conversions affect data usability and how such important property may be guaranteed. In our discussion, we refer to an existing multigranular spatio-temporal model, whose design was previously proposed as extension of the ODMG data model.

In applications involving spatio-temporal modelling, granularities of data may have to adapt according to the evolving semantics and significance of data. To address such a problem, in this paper we define ST2_ODMGe, a multigranular spatio-temporal model supporting evolutions, which encompass the dynamic adaptation of attribute granularities, and the deletion of attribute values. Evolutions are specified as Event - Condition - Action rules and are performed at run-time. The event, the condition and the action may refer to a period of time and a geographical area. Periodic evolutions may be specified, referring to both transaction and valid time dimensions. The evolution may also be constrained by the attribute values. Evolutions greatly enhance exibility in multigranular spatio-temporal data handling but require revisiting the notion of object consistency with respect to class definitions and access to multigranular object values.