With the increased pressure in industry to drive sustainability and the deployment of complex network architectures and services, to meet the expectations of customers and shareholders, are the issues that need to be tackled. Here’s how EU funded and Eurescom led project PAROMA-MED is implementing sustainable practices and plans to contribute to the health vertical. The goal is to develop Sustainable technology by design and build trustworthiness for its uptake.

Sustainable architecture for health applications in 6G involves designing efficient, low latency systems, secure and reliable networks that cater to the high demands of healthcare applications in next-generation wireless networks. With 6G anticipated to provide ultra-low latency, high data rates, and massive device connectivity, its deployment in health sectors will support complex applications like telemedicine, remote monitoring, AI diagnostics, and smart hospitals. Sustainable architecture in this context emphasizes efficient resource use, reduced energy consumption, and long-term resilience.

The project PAROMA-MED develops, validates and evaluates a platform – based hybrid-cloud delivery framework for privacy- and security- assured services and applications in federative cross-border environments. To this purpose, the project develops new architectures, technologies, tools and services to support various aspects, including automatic attestation of federation partners; privacy and security by design; continuous risk assessment; privacy-preservation; and trusted data storage and processing in federative environments; AI/ML by design, managed privacy and security operations for automated policy enforcement; and cyberthreat detection and mitigation. PAROMA-MED project approached sustainable practices to handle data in the project with a holistic approach considering the potential stakeholders which are involved in related processes.

Here’s how the project is addressing sustainability needs:

1. Resource Optimization and Smart Infrastructure: The project evolves and provides a thorough set of functional and not functional requirements classified across several dimensions. This includes the role of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard and positioned it at the epicenter of interworking and interoperability as an important component of smart infrastructure.

2. Network optimization for Health Applications: Deploying a 6G network sustainably may require a significant initial investment, especially in infrastructure. Patented (by Ericsson) a Path Computation Engine that assesses vulnerabilities and modifies the networking path for protected services and connections taking into account administrative policies
and the National Institute of Standards and Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce(NIST) vulnerability scores. This helps to prioritize different healthcare needs, optimizing resources based on application requirements like speed, bandwidth, or latency, leading to reduced infrastructure strain and power use.

3. Federated learning Integration: Classified Federated ML frameworks and carried out interesting experiments, this includes elaborated an extended Use Case for demonstrating the full cycle of data from creation to usage and involvement in added value applications (Federated ML).

4. AI Model protection and controlled use: Produced AI Models are treated as data assets and remain protected without direct exposure. PAROMA-MED deploys them temporarily close to the data for inference purposes in a volatile way.

5. Secure and Resilient System Design: Edge nodes representing all stakeholders are attested for integrity and adherence to foreseen principles of operation. Proofs are produced based on Hardware Root of Trust and the results are available for continuous node attestation. Collaborating nodes verify every peer’s integrity and proceed to interactions only when trust is established.

6. Data Privacy and Encryption: Sustainable health systems must secure sensitive health data while minimizing the collection of data. The project has elaborated strategies on the utilization of Data Watermarking and Model Watermarking techniques for all assets and started implementing the relevant artifacts that continuously evolve around Privacy Awareness UI/UX solutions. Furthermore, the project enforces local usage of data and focuses on federation of data attributes to allow for sufficient data FAIRness.

7. Resilience through Decentralization: Decentralized network architectures, that are sending code close to health data, can reduce the central server load and support sustainable, fault-tolerant systems, minimizing downtime and energy costs.

Potential Challenges

• Data Management: Health applications generate vast amounts of data, and managing this sustainably requires effective data reduction techniques, compression, and efficient storage solutions. In this context the project has started working with Data Space connectors to be utilized for controlled (policy and contract enforcement) and traceable use of data.
• Ethical and Regulatory Considerations: Ensuring security, privacy, and equitable access to sustainable health applications in 6G is crucial, particularly given the sensitivity of health datal

By focusing on these areas, sustainable architecture in 6G could revolutionize healthcare, providing faster, more reliable services while minimizing environmental impact. Further, following the pace paved by Data Space initiatives across Europe, the project aspires to offer artifacts that will ensure the maximum exploitation of data value, within these rich and continuously evolving ecosystems, according to concrete and pervasive sovereignty principles which are elevating the role of and empowering the data owner/subject.

Further information

• PAROMA-MED project website: https://paroma-med.eu/