# Data Protection and Privacy of the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHTs)
## 5 Recommendations  
After careful analysis of data privacy and protection policies and compliance issues for IoHT-based systems, some recommendations can assist in improving this system. These recommendations assist in resolving healthcare data security problems due to compliance issues between different legal frameworks. * Fines and Penalties: IoT devices gather a huge amount of information and there are several privacy risks associated with the usage and access of the data. Specifically, individual identification and behavior monitoring are major concerns. As the usage of IoT devices is increasing in the healthcare sector, a huge amount of private data is processed and stored. There is a need to introduce new privacy safeguards. The health information collected from devices like Fitbit/Jawbone [82] can be used to detect disease correlations with new treatment options with remote monitoring;
* Data Anonymization: IoT devices gather most of the data aggregated from the environment and forward it via a router or intermediate device for processing. During this process, several protocols and compression schemes are used as the storage space on the devices is limited and cannot handle big headers like that used for Internet Protocol IPv6. This data is sanitized as closely as possible to the device that created it since this communication avoids safety risks;
* Healthcare System Design: The healthcare system should be designed in such a way that it provides the controls in a user-friendly manner. An end-user must have full control over his/her collected data at any moment i.e., to whom it can be or cannot be shared. At any moment, the user should be given the possibility to know and control who has his data, what data have been collected, and for what purposes they will be used for the legitimate initial purpose;
* Privacy by Design: Privacy embedded into the design is an essential component integrated into the whole IoHT core system. The privacy safeguard framework must be implemented from the beginning of the system engineering process. The healthcare devices operate with user interactions or web interfaces. There are no privacy protection guidelines available while designing device interfaces. There are several vulnerabilities in web-based interfaces that are prone to data leakage and information leakage attacks. Most of the devices do not have authentication features or have default passwords that are difficult to enter due to their small size interfaces;
* Communication Security: There are several communication protocols used in IoT healthcare devices. There are no specific guidelines provided in data privacy laws about protocol security or what type of encryption or anonymity standards should be adopted for IoT devices, which operate on low memory and computation resources. These privacy laws should provide transparent policies about the communication security of these devices, especially for use in hospitals;
* Dispute Resolution: There is a need to resolve regional and international disputes regarding data protection. There are different versions of healthcare data privacy laws enforced regionally and internationally. If the healthcare data of a citizen is processed in a different country or state where different data privacy laws are enforced, then what are the possible legal issues that should apply to that person's processed data? These types of disputes should be resolved in the national healthcare policies;* Awareness Programs: Awareness programs are very significant to highlight the importance of data privacy, especially in the healthcare sector. IT staff, management staff, and other related staff of a healthcare facility should be aware and carry out the practices of secure processing of healthcare data. They must be aware of the consequences in the case of data leakage and what penalties they would be charged in the case of carelessness. Doctor and emergency response teams should be trained for the secure usage of their devices (i.e., laptops and cellphones, etc.)