Developing a Secure Distributed Electronic Health System Using Information Hiding Techniques (original) (raw)

In general, urban hospitals offer specialized healthcare services, while rural hospitals have limited services and normally offer only basic hospital facilities. Therefore, people in rural areas have to travel relatively long distances to urban hospitals for specialized healthcare services. Ever since healthcare information systems have been implemented, the importance of their security cannot be overemphasized, particularly in the brilliance of the fact that healthcare information systems are deemed to comprise extremely sensitive data. The idea of storing healthcare data in electronic form raises concerns about patient privacy and information security. A secure distributed system is design to mitigate any threats in a portion of the system that will endanger data confidentiality, integrity and availability. This enhancement on distributed systems enables isolation of elements so that an intrusion only offers physical access to a part of the system; averts computer break-in by malicious users, and possible attempts by registered users to exceed or abuse their privileges. This paper provides an insight on securing data in electronic health system using secure distributed computing through steganography and watermarking algorithms for information hiding. The successful design and development of the secure electronic health system will assist healthcare professionals to ensure trust and enhance work productivity for improved medical healthcare delivery in developing countries like Nigeria Telemedicine, which is the use of technology to deliver healthcare services from distance has been demonstrated as an effective way of overcoming certain barriers to healthcare, particularly for communities located in rural and remote areas [1]. In addition, telemedicine can ease the gaps in providing crucial care for those who are underserved, principally because of a shortage of sub-specialty providers. Therefore attempt to introduce computerized healthcare information systems should be able to guarantee adequate protection of the confidentiality and integrity of patient information [2]. The aim of which is not to replace face-to-face medicine, but more usually to improve people's health in certain well defined situations [3]. Telemedicine mainly uses video conferencing equipment [4], which is an interactive technology that enables patient and health consultants at distant cites to establish a face to face session. In other to create a secured connection, effective security must be established between sessions. This involves combination of physical security, technical security, data integrity, availability of medical records, and most importantly data confidentiality between the practitioner and the patient. Managing health information through communication channels carries the risk that may adversely affect quality of care if such communication channels are not effectively secured. The integrity of the clinical workflow supported by the medical records must also be maintained.