Gaia-X-Med: Experiences with Building Dataspaces for Medical Applications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study proposes a framework for an information-sharing site in the medical field, similar to Gaia-X, and is an exciting research topic. This subject has already been shared through the preprint at https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202410.1403/v1. Six use cases are presented for secure information sharing in the medical field, and these six areas are explained in detail at https://gaia-med.org/.

I believe the following aspects should be addressed for improvement:

1. While conceptually configuring such an infrastructure is feasible, it is essential to validate the practical necessity of this system for sharing medical data beyond the existing information systems already in use by medical institutions. Close collaboration with healthcare institutions will be needed in the future development stages.

2. Although the paper discusses sharing medical data, it would benefit from providing more concrete schema structures and detailed methodologies, such as an Entity-Relationship diagram or database configuration.

3. Posting the use cases on the web page is a positive step for the project; however, it would be beneficial to include more detailed content.

4. The six proposed methodologies are pretty abstract, and they would be more effective if presented with greater specificity.

5. Assigning sequence numbers to each figure and referring to them in the explanations would help improve the reader's understanding.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The abstract promises to present the approach to secure authentication and digital contract negotiations central to this (Gaia-X-Med perhaps?) endeavor. The reader is lost long before getting to the meat of the paper.

Line 22 buy should be by

Section1.4 is reasonable, although it reminds me of the structure of a dissertation, not a paper. I did not find the paper followed this section.

Figure 1 - There are unconnected and unreferenced boxes (diagnosis assistance and models created by experts).

Use Case descriptions should have additional details as to the type of data and the privacy concerns.

Line 305 - sections of a paper are not referred to as a chapter. Was this perhaps a reworking of a dissertation?

Figure 4 - what do the numbers represent?

Line 398 - what is (ePa) and why is there no reference?

Lines 427 and 434 (and others) - printed the paper in black and white. With no reference to the numbers on the diagram, these paragraphs were difficult.

Line 459 - Acronym introduced previously

Lines 905-8 - How is this different from the Gaia-X vision?

Lines 911-923 - I believe the conclusion of the work is that the inclusion of a Digital Wallet is necessary to make the Gaia-X-Med work for individuals. I am not, however confident I've got it right.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.       The section of Related Work is a very shallow. It presents just enumeration of related works, but no reviewing of these works is presented.

2.       Relate color of case in Figure 1 to the description of case. Define the color used in Figure 1 for the case next to the description of case.

3.       “more. [21]”. Reference number must be placed before period. There are more such situations.

4.       “To deconstruct this statement and check against our requirements,”. Which statement if this is the first statement of paragraph? Is Gaia-X checking against your requirements?

5.       (ePa) [? ] in Germany - ??

6.       “Data Integration Centres (DIZ)”. Why not “Data Integration Centres (DIC)”?

7.       “Your Own Gaia-X (Yo-Ga-X)”. Why not “Your Own Gaia-X (Own-Gaia-X)”?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English must be improved to more clearly express the research.

Author Response

Please see the attachment! Thank you!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I appreciate your responses to my comments, and I believe most aspects of this paper have been improved. Comment 4 referred to the six use cases; they have been well explained. I wish you the best of luck!

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript is written in clear and concise English, with a high standard of grammar and vocabulary.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your very positive feedback! We appreciate that very much.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Good revisions.

Figure 1 is still dependent on color for interpretation so the recommendation is to divide and label the processes for good understanding in black and white (as is done in Figure 5). Looks great in color but without color it is difficult to tie to the discussion. Are the colors consistent throughout all the diagrams? If so, Line 186 should be figures (plural).

I am at a loss as to how to make the paper accessible to those who are color blind.

Author Response

Comment 1:

Figure 1 is still dependent on color for interpretation so the recommendation is to divide and label the processes for good understanding in black and white (as is done in Figure 5). Looks great in color but without color it is difficult to tie to the discussion. Are the colors consistent throughout all the diagrams? If so, Line 186 should be figures (plural).

I am at a loss as to how to make the paper accessible to those who are color blind.

 

Response to Comment 1:

We have re-considered your comment and agree with you - we need to do something for those who cannot print in color or see colors. Therefore, we added numbers to each of the use cases in Figure 1, and both numbers and colors are now used in the use case descriptions. We believe that it should be fine now.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

"We have addressed it in
three ways: (1) We have moved related work into its own section (Section 2). (2) We have
moved the former Subsection 4.1 on other Gaia-x implementations to the new Section 2 and
integrated it. (3) We added the desired reviews of the other works where applicable. Actually,
most of these prior works have to be seen more as a base of our work than as competing
approaches, so an additional review does not really make sense".

However, I can not agree. I repeat the same: "

1.       The section of Related Work is a very shallow. It presents just enumeration of related works, but no reviewing of these works is presented."

You are writing: "most of these prior works have to be seen more as a base of our work". Especially, for such a  case, you have to review the related works that it would be possible to know a novelty introduced by you.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English could be improved to more clearly express the research.

Author Response

Comment1: 

"We have addressed it in
three ways: (1) We have moved related work into its own section (Section 2). (2) We have
moved the former Subsection 4.1 on other Gaia-x implementations to the new Section 2 and
integrated it. (3) We added the desired reviews of the other works where applicable. Actually,
most of these prior works have to be seen more as a base of our work than as competing
approaches, so an additional review does not really make sense".

However, I can not agree. I repeat the same: "

1.       The section of Related Work is a very shallow. It presents just enumeration of related works, but no reviewing of these works is presented."

You are writing: "most of these prior works have to be seen more as a base of our work". Especially, for such a  case, you have to review the related works that it would be possible to know a novelty introduced by you.

 

Response to Comment 1:

Thank you again! We agree that it makes a lot of sense to describe the relationship to other works in much more detail and have done that by rewriting/extending Section 2. It now clearly explains how our approach builds on other basic concepts and solutions, and it also clearly describes the differences to other projects as well as the innovations provided by our approach. The differences between the prior version and the new one have been marked. 

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the revision.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English could be improved to more clearly express the research.