Distributed directory system: A healthcare use case for rural areas

The digital content of users is commonly organised in local directories representing entities from the real world (e.g., people, locations, organisations, and events). Different representations can show different "versions", using different names to refer to the same real world entity (e.g., George Lombardi, Lombardi G., Dr. Lombardi). Although the data in these directories are related and can even complement each other, there are no formal links connecting them and allowing users to share and search across them. In this work we propose a Distributed Directory System, applied to A Healthcare Use Case for Rural Areas that allows peers: (i) to maintain full control over their data; and (ii) to find different versions of an entity based on any name that is used in the network to refer to it. We evaluate the approach in networks of different sizes using PlanetLab and we show promising results in terms of scalability.