Scholarly value and potential contribution

The development of applications and tools for high performance computational Grids is complicated by the heterogeneity and frequently dynamic behavior of the underlying resources; by the complexity of the applications themselves which often combine aspects of supercomputing and distributed computing and by the need to achieve high levels of performance. The key to realizing the benefits of Grid computing is standardization, so that the diverse resources that make up a modern computing environment can be discovered, accessed, allocated, monitored, and in general managed, as a single virtual system – even when provided by different vendors and/or operated by different organizations. Standardization is an important goal but cannot always be achieved. Thus interoperability of different solutions is equally important. The publication will present the existing state-of-the-art in Grid technology which is applied for healthcare purposes. It will contribute to identifying new approaches to Virtual Organization technology and to advancing the current generation of Grids towards the knowledge Grid and complete virtualization of Grid resources. The publication will present existing schemes in order to identify, extract and describe best practice in order to foster uptake and use of Grid technology in within eHealth. It will represent a platform to accelerate the adoption of Grid technology within eHealth and to demonstrate its utility.