Identifying and utilizing secure paths in ad hoc assistive medical environments
As the capabilities of mobile devices continuously improve, a lot of environments that utilize such devices extend their functionalities; as a notable example, assistive environments offer a lot of characteristics that seemed inevitable a few years ago. In the healthcare domain modern systems are able to support advanced characteristics such as those associated with remote treatment facilities. In these environments sensitive medical data are being transmitted; therefore there is a need to ensure the security properties of medical information. A number of strict security requirements often imposed by different international legislation processes emerge due to the sensitivity of data being transmitted. In addition, in the absence of fixed infrastructures and stable topologies there is a need to create secure paths end-to-end for secure and efficient communication. In this paper we present an architecture that allows dissemination of medical information in a secure manner in the absence of stable topologies and infrastructures built upon resource efficient devices. The presented architecture utilizes advanced management techniques, achieving secure and privacy-preserving transmission of sensitive data. We present a combination of different techniques and with a number of initial measurements we show the effective operation of our architecture in the presence of an adequately large number of users participating in the performance test-bed scenario. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
medical information systems security and privacy information retrieval wireless environments