Protection of data confidentiality and patient privacy in medical sensor networks

Security of data collection and transmission in implantable and wearable sensor networks is critical. In this chapter, existing methods to protect data confidentiality and patient privacy are reviewed and current challenges discussed. An example of addressing these challenges, a secure, lightweight user authentication scheme is presented: Securing User Access to Medical Sensing Information (SecMed) is a mutual authentication protocol between healthcare professional and accessed node (Personal Device Assistant (PDA) or medical sensor) to ensure medical data is not exposed to unauthorized persons. It also ensures medical data sent to healthcare professionals are not from a malicious node. SecMed is more scalable, requiring less memory than symmetric key-based schemes. Finally, security analyses and performance evaluation results are presented.