Anonymity and Application Privacy in Context of Mobile Computing in eHealth

  • Authors:
  • Daniel Slamanig;Christian Stingl;Christian Menard;Martina Heiligenbrunner;Jürgen Thierry

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt, Austria 9020;School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt, Austria 9020;School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt, Austria 9020;School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt, Austria 9020;School of Medical Information Technology, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt, Austria 9020

  • Venue:
  • Mobile Response
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

In the area of health care and sports in recent years a variety of mobile applications have been established. Mobile devices are of emerging interest due to their high availability and increasing computing power in many different health scenarios. In this paper we present a scalable secure sensor monitoring platform (SSMP) which collects vital data of users. Vital parameters can be collected by just one single sensor or in a multi-sensor configuration. Nowadays a wide spectrum of sensors is available which provide wireless connectivity (e.g. Bluetooth). Vital data can then easily be transmitted to a mobile device which subsequently transmits these data to an eHealth portal. There are already solutions implementing these capabilities, however privacy aspects of users are very often neglected. Since health data may enable people to draw potentially compromising conclusions (e.g. insurance companies), it is absolutely necessary to design an enhanced security concept in this context. To complicate matters further, the trustworthiness of providers which are operating with user's health data can not be determined by users a priori. This means that the security concept implemented by the provider may bear security flaws. Additionally there is no guarantee that the provider preserves the users privacy claims. In this work we propose a security concept incorporating privacy aspects using mobile devices for transferring and storing health data at a portal. In addition, the concept guarantees anonymity in the transfer process as well as for stored data at a service provider. Hence, insider attacks based on stored data can be prevented.