Security for pervasive healthcare

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are going to allow for ubiquitous health monitoring, improving users' well-being, making the healthcare system more efficient, and helping to quickly react on emergency situations. Meeting the strict security needs of ubiquitous medical applications is a big challenge: safety and privacy of patient data has to be guaranteed all the way from the sensor nodes to the back-end services, the system has to fulfill latency needs, and lots of mobility is expected. In this paper, we introduce a deployment model for wireless sensor networks for pervasive healthcare based on the concepts of patient area and medical sensor networks. We propose a complete and efficient security framework organized into three layers, addressing the operational requirements and security needs at the patient area network, medical sensor network, and back-end levels. We specify how these layers are interconnected with each other as well as the needed security and privacy mechanisms that allow for the efficient and practical deployment of secure pervasive healthcare systems based on wireless sensor networks.