Manuscript Details

Manuscript number COSE_2018_1215

Title Case Study: Blockchain Architecture Deployment for IoT, AI and GDRP

Article type Full Length Article

Abstract
There are many experiments around blockchain, but very few case studies in production for permissioned private
blockchains, due to latency and lack of integration with legacy systems. Furthermore, when it comes to integrating
blockchain, IoT, AI with legacy systems, while achieving GDPR data privacy requirements, in a highly critical
environment such as patient control, this is the first blockchain architecture deployed in production worldwide. This
paper describes how a healthcare company, “mHealthAlert”, has deployed in production a blockchain architecture that
addresses the issues above, while achieving GDPR data privacy requirements, integrated with an IoT network and AI
blockchain services.

Keywords Private Blockchain; IoT; AI; GDPR; eHealth

Taxonomy Policy, Human Machine Interaction, Internet of Things, Performance Evaluation

Corresponding Author PILAR SANTAMARIA

Corresponding Author's Dell

Institution

Order of Authors PILAR SANTAMARIA, Maria Teresa Villalba de Benito

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Pilar Santamaria
Dell EMEA
Rivera del Loira
28043 Madrid
Spain

Editor-In-Chief
Computers & Security
Elsevier

30th of November, 2018

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am pleased to submit an original research article entitled “Case Study: Blockchain Architecture

Deployment for IoT, AI and GDRP”, authored by Pilar Santamaria and M. Teresa Villalba for your

consideration for publication in the Computers and Security special issue on “Blockchain and

Cryptocurrencies”.

In this manuscript, we describe how a healthcare company, MHealthAlert, has designed and deployed

in production a blockchain architecture that addresses key issues for private permissioned blockchains:

latency and integration with legacy systems, while achieving GDPR data privacy requirements. Also,

integrated with an IoT network and AI blockchain services.

We truly believe that this manuscript is appropriate for publication by Computers & Security, Elsevier,

since this is the first blockchain architecture deployed in production worldwide integrating blockchain

applications, IoT and AI with legacy systems, while achieving GDPR data privacy requirements, in a

highly critical environment such as patient control.

This manuscript has not been published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. We

have no conflicts of interest to disclose that would affect the decision to publish this manuscript.

Thank you for your consideration. Sincerely,

Pilar Santamaria
Case Study: Blockchain Architecture Deployment for IoT, AI and GDRP

Pilar Santamaria, VP Innovation and CTO EMEA, Dell, pilar.santamaria@dell.com. Madrid,

Spain.
M. Teresa Villalba, Department of Science, Computers and Technology, Universidad Europea
de Madrid, maite.villalba@universidadeuropea.es, Madrid, Spain.

ABSTRACT
There are many experiments around blockchain, but very few case studies in production for

permissioned private blockchains, due to latency and lack of integration with legacy systems.

Furthermore, when it comes to integrating blockchain, IoT and AI with legacy systems, while

achieving GDPR data privacy requirements, in a highly critical environment such as patient

control, this is a unique blockchain architecture deployed in production worldwide.

This paper describes how a healthcare company, “mHealthAlert”, has deployed in production

a blockchain architecture that addresses the issues above, while achieving GDPR data privacy

requirements, integrated with an IoT network and AI blockchain services.

Keywords

Blockchain, IoT, AI, GDPR, eHealth

1. Introduction

The nature of the patient care activities requires companies to have a highly secure platform,

compliant with local regulations. Data privacy and more specifically, the compliance with

GDPR, is a critical aspect. They collect patient health data in real time from sensors and they

manage health records. They need to automatize the consent from patients in an immutable

platform for audit purposes. An architecture based on blockchain technology would provide

the immutability needed, but this immutability is challenged by the need to modify records,

according to the GDPR regulation. Another key aspect is how to control how data insights are

being exploded for ethics and audit purposes.

In the field of healthcare, one of the main threats is to have health records, including sensitive

information, released to non-authorized parties [1]. The General Data Protection Regulation

(EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) introduces “the right to withdraw consent” (Article 7(3)) and the

“right to be forgotten” (Article17) [2]. The consent is intended to give legitimate permission

to whomever controls the data to store, process or even disseminate personal data for uses

other than those for which we are giving them.

According to the GDPR definition [3], companies and public entities managing personal data,

faced the challenge to deal with data subject´s rights to access, amend or delete their data.

Data subject [4] is defined as natural person whose personal data is processed by a controller

or processor [5]. Failing on attending these requests would revert into a loss of citizen´s rights

and therefore, penalties to the entities holding the data. The aim of GDPR is to protect EU

citizens from privacy and data breaches. The new directive puts extra focus on the rights of

the data subjects and the enforcement for compliance. It also extends liability to third parties,

such as data processors, and it increases the territorial scope [6].

On the other hand, companies and public entities have the need to know their customers deeper,

in order to predict needs and provide a better service; they need to have access to data from

other legal entities in order to better help their customers, for example, for comparing patient

medical history or for patient monitoring. They also need to custody and process data across

borders, with different regulations. And they need to achieve their business and service

objectives under the GDPR regulation, no matter where they are, as long as they deal with

European citizen´s data. This is one of the key differences GDPR adds: data sovereignty

belongs to the data owner and it does not depend any longer on the data jurisdiction. This means

all data processors must achieve GDPR, even if they are US based, as long as they deal with

European Citizen´s data. Therefore, they need to achieve the content requirements of GDPR.

Consent is defined by GDPR as: “‘consent of the data subject means any freely given, specific,

informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a
statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal

data relating to him or her” [6].

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is key to audit and control which entity is

sending which query and what information is being shared. Not only for the GDPR

requirements mentioned above, but for ethical reasons. Patient´s information is highly sensitive

and also key insights, such as health predictions, must be managed with the highest ethical

standards. For this purpose, it is important to integrate a blockchain immutable system that will

keep information in regards to these types of queries for auditing and control.

In this paper, we describe how MHealthAlert [7] has designed and put into production an

architecture based on blockchain technology for automatized consent in a way that no personal

data was kept in the blockchain after the data owner had asked for data deletion. Also, this

architecture based on blockchain provides Artificial Intelligence (AI) immutable tracking and

control, all integrated with legacy systems in a multicloud and hybrid environment and an

Internet of Things (IoT) network. MHealthAlert has developed patient remote care

automatization and pharmacy processes. They provide retail diabetes and cardiovascular

diseases prevention, chronic remote care management, pharmacy trials and virtual weight

control, according to health thresholds. All these data is collected from an IoT health sensor

network. If a threshold overpasses, their system sends an alarm to the assigned doctor, health

contact centre or caregiver through a mobile or web application. Their artificial intelligence

system provides health alerts based on deep learning predictions from historical and real time

bio-data. Their operations are supported by their headquarters in San Francisco and Madrid,

therefore, they rely in a hybrid cloud environment in order to support patients and doctors

globally.

This paper is structured as following: Section 1 describes the problem statement; Section 2

summarizes the related work; Section 3 explains the architecture implemented, and finally,

section 4 presents the conclusions and future work.

2. Related work

The following research treats the GDPR data subject writes and control from a blockchain

perspective, and how this technology has enabled mHealthAlert to resolve the challenges

reflected above. As explained, the key requirement is to store consent transactions in a way

that records will be immutable. Immutability is a basic concept of a blockchain [8], allowing a

ledger to reflect a transaction that cannot be altered, as shown in Error! Reference source not

found..

Figure 1. How block cannot be altered unnoticed [8]

A transaction can include any type of virtual agreement, order or confirmation. In this paper,

we will treat consent as a virtual transaction in which a data subject agrees to share a virtual

asset, which is personal data.

There has been previous works done analysing how blockchain can achieve compliance over

personal data [9] and what the compliance challenges represent. This article [9] explains how

the immutable nature of blockchain is a challenge to address the modification and deletion

rights from GDPR, already explained in Section 1. As shown in Figure 1, once a block is added,

it cannot be deleted, neither changed. The industry is researching ways to create mutability in

blockchain, though no models have been proposed yet. In this paper we propose a solution to

this issue. We will explain how blockchain immutability is maintained, while modification and

deletion rights are kept; this is done through a Pseudonymization Application. No previous
blockchain researches have integrated this type of applications with blockchain before,

validating performance at the same time.

In regards to individual’s preferences information, there is previous research on personalized

reputation distributed systems, focused on online ecommerce platforms [10]. This research

does not address individual´s consent for data sharing, so our research could complement this

previous work by providing an architecture for blockchain based consent.

On the other hand, there has been work about how decentralized security systems could achieve

higher levels of trust excluding the control by a third party [11]. This study implements a

protocol for access control management in which personal data sharing is the transaction. This

is implemented as a public blockchain, similar to the Bitcoin application. Our research

complements this work [11], by integrating anonymization, as part of GDPR requirements,

which is one of the issues we resolve. Our paper also complements the paper “Moving Toward

a Blockchain-based Method for the Secure Storage of Patient Records” [12] and “Healthcare

Data Gateways: Found Healthcare Intelligence on Blockchain with Novel Privacy Risk

Control” [13], as we address the specific GDPR requirements and we also add a detailed

architecture on production, enhancing previous researches.

Our blockchain solution is a permissioned private blockchain. This type of blockchain has been

selected because it provides better scalability and performance than public blockchains [14].

The performance limitations of some blockchain standards for critical environments have been

recognized in previous works. Blockchains are based on a consensus algorithm “All the nodes

in the blockchain have equal status. These nodes achieve consensus by using the prior

agreement of the rules and following the principle of majority dominance” [15].

This consensus is driven by an algorithm, which in many blockchains [15] is the Byzantine

Consensus Algorithm. The industry is working on improvements to this algorithm, due to low

scalability and latency [16]. Therefore, a latency threshold of 200ms has been set for the

validation of the deployment we are describing here, as this is one of the main constrains for
real blockchain applications. This threshold has been defined by the maximum latency value

before integrating blockchain in the architecture, so that the blockchain implementation will

not impact previous customer experience, in terms of performance. Another key mater is time

to finality, or even asynchronous transactions that could lead to blockchain inconsistency

“Consensus is a fundamental building block used to solve many practical problems that appear

on reliable distributed systems” [17], which will be also validated in section 4.

In this paper [18], the author analyses key traditional vulnerabilities that may impact IoT

environments and how these potential threats can be mitigated using with blockchain smart

contracts technology. As an example, the “Bubles of Trust” system could integrate with the

architecture we are proposing to provide blockchain based threat security to mHealthAlert´s

IoT network. This is possible because the architecture we are describing in this paper has been

designed so that present and future blockchain applications can be added through a business

processes management and integration software application, as it will be treated in section 4.

In this paper, we describe an architecture deployed in production based on blockchain

technology, integrated with an IoT network, Artificial Intelligence and legacy systems. This

case study covers how blockchain can enable GDPR data privacy requirements; as well as

blockchain based audit and control for Data Insights management for Artificial Intelligence

systems, using a comprehensive reference architecture that has been successfully deployed.

As far as we know, none of the previous researches have addressed the following before:

- A reference architecture that can enable to address GDPR controls on data privacy through

consent registration, access registration and access cancelation, led by data owners. This

implies an architecture supporting process flow automatization with a latency validation below

the agreed threshold of 200ms.

- A reference architecture that provides auditing and control for Data Insights management for

Artificial Intelligence systems.

-A Pseudonymization application integrated with blockchain.

-An architecture that integrates an IoT and a hybrid cloud environment.

- A real deployment in production, according to this reference architecture.

3. Blockchain based architecture enabling GDPR

3.1. mHealthAlert GDPR controls

According to GDPR, consent requirements imply the following [2]:

“The conditions for consent have been strengthened, and companies will no longer be able to

use long illegible terms and conditions full of legalese, as the request for consent must be given

in an intelligible and easily accessible form, with the purpose for data processing attached to

that consent. Consent must be clear and distinguishable from other matters and provided in an

intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language. It must be as easy to

withdraw consent as it is to give it.”

In order to best prepare for compliance, companies and public entities need to change their

business processes: from a “compliance-only” centric perspective, to a compliance and citizen

centric approach. GDPR gives ownership and data sovereignty to every citizen. It empowers

data owners to decide over their personal digital assets, no matter where these assets are.

Under this new model, blockchain allows each individual data owner to be able to share his/her

personal data in a selective way, with just a double click. It also allows them to access those

assets and to delete them totally or partially. The user interface is simple, easy to access, read

and understand, in order to follow GDPR guidelines (2). Figures 3 and 4 shows screen

shots or the user interface from the Business Process Management Application.
 Figures 3 and 4. Intuitive Data owner interface to register, accept, access, modify or delete personal data

This is implemented through the Business Process Management Application software

integrated with blockchain. When designing the Business Process Management

Application, the process flow shall be programmed so that data sharing can be initiated

by the data owner, who sends the request to share data. The system must identify it,

extracting the file hash before sharing it. Likewise, the entity with whom the data is being

shared with can initiate this request to the data owner through a web message. This flow

is managed by the Business Process Management Application integrated in the

architecture. And this is done with a very simple and intuitive interface, allowing the

automatization while keeping personalization. Personalization is a requirement, as

consent must be targeted to the individual, who must have access to individual data in a

granular way.

Another core piece of this solution is the Data Integration Software. Data will be collected

and stored both in the public cloud and on-prem. As the blockchain confirms that consent

has been given on a data asset, the Business Process Application will send the request to

store the data. The Data Integration Application will assure the compatibility across the

blocks, the legacy systems and the cloud.

3.2. mHealth Alert Data Architecture and flow:

8
The Business Process Management Application and the Data Integration Application

have been programmed to address the GDPR controls. The legal partner at mHealthAlert

has provided guidance on the GDPR controls needed to be programmed. Based on this,

the flow would be as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. mHealthAlert Data Architecture and Flow

1. The data owner sends the request for registration through a web interface.

2. The data owner enters identity and other personal profile data. The data owner

reconfirms that he/she authorizes data sharing. This information is sent to the

Business Process Management Application, inside mHealthAlert cloud.

3. The Business Process Management Application uploads profile data in a

repository inside the mHealthAlert cloud for farther use for medical services

purposes.

4. Profile data is uploaded in an on-premise data centre by the Business Process

Management Application for farther processing, such as pseudonymization.

9
5. The Business Process Management Application requests the hash for the data

sharing authorization file for that patient identity. It also sends the

pseudonymization request, so that the patient identity is translated into a code by

the pseudonymization application. Through this code, the patient identity will be

anonymized. A table is stored so that reverse translation can be done.

6. The hash and the pseudonymization applications obtain the profile file from the

on-premises repository.

7. The pseudonym and the hash are created.

8. The pseudonym and the hash are sent to the Business Process Management

Application.

9. The Business Process Management Application sends the pseudonym and the

hash to the blockchain API through the Data Integration Application. The

transaction is added as a block in the blockchain after having been processed and

accepted using the Byzantine Fault Tolerance Consensus Algorithm (BFT). The

API is located in a mission critical service level public cloud, where three nodes

are part of the blockchain for the transaction validation using Byzantine Fault

Tolerance Consensus Algorithm (BFT). As the standard, the transaction is

validated and therefore, added to the blockchain as long as 2/3 of the nodes agree.

Transaction = α

Nodeβ  α Nodeγ Nodeγ  α Nodeβ Node δ  α Nodeβ

Nodeβ  α Nodeδ Nodeγ  α Nodeδ Node δ  α Nodeγ

Nodeβ= Majority ( α Nodeβ, α Nodeγ, α Nodeδ)

Nodeγ= Majority ( α Nodeγ, α Node β, α Nodeδ)

Nodeδ= Majority ( α Nodeδ, α Node β, α Nodeγ)

10
 Figure 6 Message flow across nodes in a Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus Algorithm [16]

Based on the majority of agreements, each node validates and inserts the

transaction into the blockchain. As time to finality is acceptable, <200ms, the

agreement kept in every node´s blockchain is consistent.

Block fields are: date, authorization file hash (hash only) and pseudonym.

Pseudonym is absolutely critical, so that the blockchain content can be audited;

and used by other ecosystem applications in this real environment. A receipt is

generated by the blockchain application.

10. The blockchain receipt is sent to the Data Integration Application, which sends

the receipt to the Business Process Management Application.

11. The Business Process Management Application sends the receipt to an

unstructured storage system located at mHealthAlert´s on-premise data centre.

This is done through the Data Integration Application.

12. The Business Process Management Application spreads the information

authorized to be shared to the blockchain´s community members storage systems,

through the Data Integration Application, in order to assure compatibility with

legacy 3rd party systems.

This model will support the extension to other blockchain communities. Based on future

multichain capabilities, this flow could be set for multichain environments, allowing the

specific consent from the data owner.

11
Blockchain also enables one of the key changes that GDPR is forcing to implement: data

portability rights. Under this architecture, data owners can select the chain to which they

would like to share their data with. Data authorization can be registered and spammed to

the new entities or communities, while being deleted from the previous ones.

Thanks to this solution, patients can easily share medical records across different legal

entities. This allows medical files sharing at big scale. This use case increases the speed

for treatment, prevents human errors and facilitates a more collaborative approach across

different medical institutions. The patient will benefit from a medical treatment that is

considering all medical history. This avoids duplication of tests, allows evolution

observation and enables preventive medicine.

3.3. Architecture

Figure 7 shows the architecture implemented by mHealthAlert.

Figure 7. Blockchain Architecture implementation integrating IoT in a hybrid cloud environment

Below we explain in detail the components of the architecture and how they interact:

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1. The IoT network has different subnetworks. One is dedicated to collect patient´s

data from sensors. Sensors differ from health industry vendor depending on the

purpose. Vendor “AND” collects weight and blood pressure data. “Foracare” is

the provider for glucose and temperature meters. “NONIN” manufactures the

oxygen and pulse meter. They all collect bio-information and send it via Bluetooth

to a home proprietary device, which translates this information and sends it

through a simple ADSL home line.

2. Another IoT subnetwork is the mobile health applications, installed either on

smartphones or wearables. These IoT software agents will collect bio-data and

send it through WiFI, 2G, 3G or 4G.

3. The third IoT subnetwork comprises all the mobile and fixed devices that will

access the mHealthAlert website, or will have the mHealthAlert application

installed. These will be connected either through wireline, WiFI or cellular

protocols. This is the IoT network from which the users will register and will

provide the consent to share their personal data.

4. All IoT devices from the different three networks communicate with the

mHealthAlert cloud through HTTPS. This is a public cloud based software

application that integrates four modules: a Health Management System, the

Business Process Management Application, the Data Integration Application and

the Artificial Intelligence Suite. When a new user registers, the mobile application

or the web interface will prompt the user to consent to share private data. As

already explained with all details in point 3.2., the Business Process Management

application will orchestrate the processes, requests and resources needed, so that

the transaction of data sharing is finalized, the blockchain receipt is stored and

13
 private data is shared and stored in different legacy systems from the blockchain

community members.

5. The pseudonymization application sorts out is key blockchain issue: consent must

be automatized in a way that no personal data is kept in the blockchain after the

data owner had asked for data deletion. This is the key problem for blockchain

based applications dealing with personal data; they need to keep consent records

immutable, while not keeping any personal data at all in the blockchain. The

proposed architecture resolves this problem. The pseudonymization application

generates a pseudonym, providing anonymity to the data owner. It will also send

the pseudonym and the ID to a local data base, in an on premises repository. For

the regulation requirements and control, this data base will be on premises,

assuring European data jurisdiction. The data base update is out of the blockchain

consent flow, but this is an important information resource to be accessed by other

systems, such as billing or operations.

6. As explained in point 3.2., information will be shared and stored in other systems

from the blockchain community, for example, at the hospital´s data centre. When

a doctor accesses patient´s information, the doctor can see patient´s consent, too.

Also, the doctor can get relevant medical information, such as real time bio-data,

statistics, alarms if health thresholds are passed over and profile information. This

information is visualized by the Health Management mHealthAlert Cloud

Application.

7. The blockchain applications, both for GDPR consent and AI auditing, are based

on another public cloud, mission critical, in order to assure low latency. The

blockchain architecture shall not impact performance. Time to finality in

14
 blockchain is a key challenge. The architecture shall be validated to assure that

latency parameters are below 200 ms.

8. Integrated in this same architecture, mHealthAlert has implemented new business

processes programming so that they can track which doctors or medical leads

access to predictive health information for which patients, based on blockchain.

This is very useful for audit and control purposes.

9. The AI Suite ingests IoT sensor logs streams in real time, transforms and analyses

those using deep learning. A copy of this data is kept in an unstructured repository

in the mHealthAlert Cloud. A visualizer shows real time dashboards that can be

customized by doctors and medical leads.

Figure 8 shows how a medical entity can control how alerts are distributed across

doctors’ units. Each unit can have more doctors assigned depending on current

number of alerts and trends. This dashboard is customized by the medical lead.

Figure 8. Medical alerts control dashboard by doctor´s unit

15
Figure 9 shows how doctors and medical leads can extract data insights from all

the IoT alerts network to understand which are the most common illnesses.

Figure 9. Alert dashboard by disease

Figure 10 shows how doctors and medical leads can know which are the busiest

and highest risk hours of the day. These insights are extracted from all the IoT

alerts network data, but only the data insights are shared, nit the data sources. It is

shared virtualized through a web browser upon request. Each request (or query)

is kept in the cloud blockchain application for auditing and ethics control

purposes.

16
 Figure 10. Alert dashboard by hour

3.4. Performance:

In the introduction, we explained how performance was a key issue, due to the time to

finality delays in blockchain. We set an acceptable threshold in regards to latency below

200ms. This threshold was set as the maximum latency value before integrating the

blockchain applications in the architecture, so that the blockchain implementation will

not impact previous customer experience in terms of performance.

Table 11 shows real time performance parameters after deployment:

Figure 11. Logs latency details

17
The tasks that are related to customer interaction will be the most latency sensitive for

this specific use case. As it is shown in the traces, the latency has an average of 130ms,

less than 200ms, which is the set threshold for validation.

Figure 11 also shows that transactions are consistent across all nodes, avoiding

duplication, wrong transactions and errors.

4. Conclusions and future work

In this paper, we have proposed an architecture that would address GDPR consent based

on blockchain. We have described the implementation of pseudonymization for patients´

identity, so that no personal data is kept in the blockchain. The architecture here presented

takes advantage of the blockchain´s immutability benefits, while keeping modification

and deletion rights through a pseudonymization Application.

We have described the data architecture and flow, integrated with the Business Processes

Management Application and the Data Integration Application. How the Data Integration

Application assures compatibility; and how the Business Processes Management

Application orchestrates the different resources of the architecture through the

programming of a process flow.

Also, it had to be integrated with an IoT network of sensors, IoT SW agents and mobile

devices, as well as the data centre and back end services such as AAA, operations,

catalogue and billing. This architecture has been integrated and deployed in a hybrid

cloud environment, integrating two public clouds and the on-premise data centre.

The deployment proves that blockchain provides immutable consent records, which was

a key objective. Another key objective achieved is to keep immutable records of the data

insights queries sent to the AI Suite for ethics and auditing purposes.

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The defined architecture has been designed in modular way, which will allow multiple

future integrations with other processes and future use cases, described as following.

Data donation for research purposes: described as the “donation” of collective health data

from different patients for research purposes. This means that each patient could decide

to share their health application data based on blockchain with research entities as long

as they are part of the same blockchain, too.

Implementing Blockchain “Bubbles of Trust”[18] on the IoT network: as explained in

section 2, the architecture we have described in this paper has been designed so that future

blockchain applications can be added through processes integration. The “Bubbles of

Trust” [18] System will complement the architecture, in order to provide blockchain

based threat security to mHealthAlert´s IoT network.

Sensor manufacturers integration into the blockchain application: as blockchain

members, they will have access to valuable information, such as false positives from their

sensors (number of ignored alerts), so that devices can be improved. They will be able to

interact with the AI Suite Cloud and their queries will be registered.

Figure 12 shows an example of the dashboard by sensor type:

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 Figure 10. Alert dashboard by hour

Multichain: Blockchain interoperability is still a key inhibitor. As technology evolves,

multichain functionality will allow to implement data sharing across different

blockchains, and therefore, different health and/or research communities. This means that

Blockchain could provide multi-consent to a community of entities, for example, different

researches, hospitals or insurance companies.

Distributed Data Privacy Control Platform: Furthermore, in the future, as multichain

features develop, the proposed architecture in this paper could scale as a common privacy

control cloud platform as-a-service that could enable data owners to keep control of all

their data assets. This would mean creating an abstraction of all data consent across all

entities in a multichain model. This would allow citizens to visualize which different

blockchains (entities) hold their personal data, always using a unique data ID that will

make impossible to identify the real data owner identity. This future development will

20
allow the data owners to take actions on their data from a single application, especially

for deletion purposes. This could be the beginning of “privacy service providers” or a

service that public entities could provide to help citizens to protect their privacy.

5. References

1. Eugenia Politou, Efthimios Alepis, Constantinos Patsakis; Forgetting personal

data and revoking consent under the GDPR: Challenges and proposed
solutions, Journal of Cybersecurity, ,
tyy001, https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyy001

2. European Union. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of

the Council of 27 April 2016 on the Protection of Natural Persons with Regard to
the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data, and
Repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Da.; 2016. https://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679.

3. European Union. Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).

Article 4. 2016 https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/

4. European Union. Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).

Glossary of terms. Data Subject definition. 2016
https://www.eugdpr.org/glossary-of-terms.html

5. Dr. Detlev GabelTim HickmanKey definitions – Unlocking the EU General Data

Protection Regulation, WhiteCase Legal Publications

6. European Union. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of

the Council of 27 April 2016 2016. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32016R0679.

7. MHealthAlert website. http://www.mhealthalert.com/index.html

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Using_Blockchain_458-461.pdf. Accessed April 30, 2018

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BRIEF BIO
M. TERESA VILLALBA received her degree in Mathematics in 1996 and her master' degree in
Computer Science in 1998 from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. She holds a PhD
in Computer Sciences with special mention to the best dissertation from Universidad de Alcalá,
Madrid. She is an associate professor in Languages and computer systems since 2014 at
Universidad Europea de Madrid (UEM) belonging to Laureate Network Universities based on
Baltimore where she works since 2002. There she has developed different facets both in the
areas of research and management, and teaching with 15 years of experience teaching in the
computer and telecommunications degrees (bilingual), as well as in the research subjects of the
Doctorate Program of Multidisciplinary Engineering and in different master's degrees, in
addition to supervising doctoral theses in the doctoral program in Education, as well as in
Computer Engineering. In her teaching training she has intervened in more than 20 congresses
of teaching innovation and has attended more than 60 pedagogical training courses, teaching
pedagogical training to other teachers. She has been academic director of the Engineering
School (2010-2012) depending directly on the School's Director and defining the online
academic and pedagogical model, which earned her the European University's quality award in
2011 with the proposal "Improving training" offered to our students through the design of new
learning formats. " She has been a postgraduate director since 2007. She is also part of the panel
of experts of the Madrimasd Foundation (Autonomous government of Madrid Education Board)
for the accreditation of Higher Education degrees (since 2015). Currently she is senior researcher
of the School of Research and Doctoral studies in charge of a multidisciplinary research group in
Educational Technology. Her areas of research are information security and technology applied
to education. Among her research interests are how educational technology can support people
with educational special needs. She collaborates with Plena Inclusion (main organization
representing the interests of people with intellectual or developmental disabilities) since 2014,
and has led several research projects in collaboration with them to help kids and youngers, with
intellectual or developmental disabilities, to learn through mobile e-learning and gamification.
The app was finalist in the Telecommunications innovation awards for the best social solution
of Vodafone Telecom Spain. In addition, she has led 4 ERASMUS+ projects about Technology
applied to education, and has participated and led other more than 25 national and international
research projects. She has published more than 60 research papers, conference papers and
books. She has obtained different awards: the best thesis of her promotion, the best research
in ICT Security in Spain in 2011 by Red Seguridad, the best teacher in the 2011-12 academic year
and the quality award for the definition of the online model of Personal University, and has
received the awards Cisco Instructor Excellence Award 2012 and Microsoft Innovative Educator
Expert for the second year in a row (2016, 2017). Lately, she has received the David A. Wilson
Award for Excellence for Research in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2018) which
recognizes the trajectory of faculty members in the field of excellence and innovation in higher
education teaching and learning by conferring an award in the form of a research grant (research
project: Digital Transformation of Higher Education: Assessment Framework for Improvement
of Digital Skills). Moreover, this last year, one of her supervised theses has received the prize for
the best research in privacy by the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (Spain Government,
2018). Since 2015, she has been the Spanish representative of the Legal & Security Issues Task
Force at CEPIS (Council of the European Professional Informatics Society) based in Brussels.
PILAR SANTAMARIA BIOGRAPHY SUMMARY

Pilar Santamaria is the VP Innovation EMEA and CTO for Dell Technologies.

She is also an Associate Professor at the European University of Madrid, since 2008.
Director of researches and key speaker at international events.

She is a bachelor in Computer and Science, MBA by University of Navarra and PhD, (all
but dissertation) at the European University of Madrid, in “Control Systems applied to
healthcare, Computer and Science department”.

She is also “Cloud Expert” at the European Commission, Board Member for Innovation
at the Spanish Computer Science Engineers Association.

She previously has held executive roles at Microsoft and Cisco. Former Director Cloud
and Enterprise at Microsoft Spain and Head of SaaS at Cisco, Worldwide.