Collaborative development of trusted mashups

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the gap that currently exists between enterprise and consumer-focused mashup tools in terms of personalized, trusted collaboration. The authors describe how Sqwelch, a semantically enabled mashup maker, addresses this gap during the design of mashups and in their execution. Design/methodology/approach - Sqwelch enables the composition of mashups based on the concept of trust explicitly specified by users through a visual interface. Taxonomies are used to enable lightweight mediation of payloads delivered through a publish/subscribe mechanism. Findings - The authors demonstrate the use of Sqwelch as a proof of concept in the remote delivery of healthcare, and how Sqwelch has been used to address areas of trust and collaboration in the delivery of telehealth services. Originality/value - Integrating trust and collaboration across the boundaries of enterprises is required where sensitive data are transferred across those boundaries in the expectation of the delivery of a service. Across these boundaries, the authors find variations in users' skills, their expectations, and their responsibilities. The prototype described here enables users to discover, compose, share and collaborate in the day-to-day use of systems that match personalized requirements.