ICT in Telemedicine: Conquering Privacy and Security Issues In Health Care Services

Advancement in telecommunication combined with improved information technology infrastructures has opened up new dimensions in e-health environment. Such technologies make readily available to access, store, manipulate and replicate medical information and images. These technologies help reduced the time and effort in diagnoses and treatment at lower cost. However, protection and authentication of such medical information and images are now becoming increasingly important in the telemedicine environment, where images are readily distributed over electronic networks.  Intruders/hackers may gain access to confidential information and possibly alter or even delete such vital records. The ultimate success of telemedicine demands an effective technology as well as privacy and security of records.  This paper explores recently identified privacy and security issues that affect telemedicine. We feature threats on security and authentication of medical records, and propose digital watermarking as a technology to curb authentication issues in telemedicine.

[1]  Junichi Iijima,et al.  A Study on Integrated Mobile Service Using Digital Watermark for Various Information Carriers , 2011, 2011 10th International Conference on Mobile Business.

[2]  Sérgio Shiguemi Furuie,et al.  Managing Medical Images and Clinical Information: InCor's Experience , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[3]  Akiyoshi Wakatani,et al.  Digital watermarking for ROI medical images by using compressed signature image , 2002, Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[4]  Kjersti Engan,et al.  Watermarking of digital mammograms without interfering with automatic detection of microcalcifications , 2003, Proceedings 2003 International Conference on Image Processing (Cat. No.03CH37429).

[5]  Hong Gu,et al.  A review of telemedicine in China , 2009, Journal of telemedicine and telecare.

[6]  F.E. Ferrante.  Maintaining Security and Privacy of Patient Information , 2006, 2006 International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society.

[7]  R. F. Olanrewaju,et al.  Detection of alterations in watermarked medical images using Fast Fourier Transform and Complex-Valued Neural Network , 2011, 2011 4th International Conference on Mechatronics (ICOM).

[8]  U. Rajendra Acharya,et al.  Efficient Storage and Transmission of Digital Fundus Images with Patient Information Using Reversible Watermarking Technique and Error Control Codes , 2009, Journal of Medical Systems.

[9]  J. M. Fitzmaurice,et al.  Telehealth research and evaluation: implications for decision makers , 1998, Proceedings Pacific Medical Technology Symposium-PACMEDTek. Transcending Time, Distance and Structural Barriers (Cat. No.98EX211).

[10]  L. R. Kavoussi,et al.  Telementoring of laparoscopic procedures , 1996, Surgical Endoscopy.

[11]  Chih-Ping Wei,et al.  Organizational management of telemedicine technology: conquering time and space boundaries in health care services , 1999 .

[12]  P. Carmo,et al.  Pediatric cardiology and telemedicine: seven years' experience of cooperation with remote hospitals. , 2010, Revista portuguesa de cardiologia : orgao oficial da Sociedade Portuguesa de Cardiologia = Portuguese journal of cardiology : an official journal of the Portuguese Society of Cardiology.

[13]  Ingemar J. Cox,et al.  Digital Watermarking and Steganography , 2014 .

[14]  Arunabha Mukhopadhyay,et al.  Security and Privacy Challenges in Telemedicine , 2011 .

[15]  Othman Omran Khalifa,et al.  State-of-the-art application of artificial neural networks in digital watermarking and the way forward , 2009 .

[16]  Othman Omran Khalifa,et al.  Forgery detection in medical images using Complex Valued Neural Network (CVNN) , 2011 .

[17]  Kevin Fu,et al.  Home Telemedicine: Encryption is Not Enough , 2009 .

[18]  Eko Supriyanto.  A suitable telehealth model for developing countries , 2011, 2011 2nd International Conference on Instrumentation, Communications, Information Technology, and Biomedical Engineering.

[19]  Anthony N. Nguyen,et al.  Assuring Authenticity of Digital Mammograms by Image Watermarking , 2008, Digital Mammography / IWDM.

[20]  Telemedicine and Trauma Referrals — a Plastic Surgery Pilot Project , 2009, Ulster medical journal.

[21]  Vasif V. Nabiyev,et al.  Medical image security and EPR hiding using Shamir's secret sharing scheme , 2011, J. Syst. Softw..

[22]  S Norman,et al.  The use of telemedicine in psychiatry. , 2006, Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing.

[23]  Rajendra Acharya U,et al.  Simultaneous storage of medical images in the spatial and frequency domain: A comparative study , 2004, Biomedical engineering online.

[24]  J. Simpson.  The role of telemedicine in a fetal cardiology service , 2011, Archives of Disease in Childhood: Fetal and Neonatal Edition.

[25]  B R Lee,et al.  Telemedicine and surgical robotics: urologic applications. , 1999, Reviews in urology.

[26]  Jasni Mohamad Zain,et al.  Security In Telemedicine: Issues In Watermarking Medical Images , 2005 .