Security Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks Used in Clinical Information Systems

Abstract

High quality healthcare is an important aspect of the modern society. In this chapter we address the security and networking architecture of a healthcare information system comprised of patients' personal sensor networks, department/room networks, hospital network, and medical databases. Areas such as diagnosis, surgery, intensive care and treatment, and patient monitoring would greatly benefit from light untethered devices which can be unobtrusively mounted on patient's body in order to monitor and report health-relevant variables to the interconnection device mounted on the patient's bed. Interconnection device should also have larger range wireless interface which should communicate to the access point in the patient's room, operation room or to the access points within the healthcare institution. The results of measurements will then be stored in central medical database with appropriate provisions for protecting the patient privacy as well as the integrity of personal health records. We review confidentiality and integrity polices for clinical information systems and discuss the feasible enforcement mechanisms over the wireless hop. We also compare candidate technologies IEEE 802.15.1 and IEEE 802.15.4 from the aspect of resilience of MAC and PHY layers to jamming and denial-of-service attacks.