Department of Ubiquitous-IT, Graduate School of Design & IT, Dongseo University, San 69-1, Jurye-2-Dong, Sasang-Gu, Busan 617-716, Korea.
Sensors (Basel). 2012;12(1):55-91. doi: 10.3390/s120100055. Epub 2011 Dec 22.
Healthcare applications are considered as promising fields for wireless sensor networks, where patients can be monitored using wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs). Current WMSN healthcare research trends focus on patient reliable communication, patient mobility, and energy-efficient routing, as a few examples. However, deploying new technologies in healthcare applications without considering security makes patient privacy vulnerable. Moreover, the physiological data of an individual are highly sensitive. Therefore, security is a paramount requirement of healthcare applications, especially in the case of patient privacy, if the patient has an embarrassing disease. This paper discusses the security and privacy issues in healthcare application using WMSNs. We highlight some popular healthcare projects using wireless medical sensor networks, and discuss their security. Our aim is to instigate discussion on these critical issues since the success of healthcare application depends directly on patient security and privacy, for ethic as well as legal reasons. In addition, we discuss the issues with existing security mechanisms, and sketch out the important security requirements for such applications. In addition, the paper reviews existing schemes that have been recently proposed to provide security solutions in wireless healthcare scenarios. Finally, the paper ends up with a summary of open security research issues that need to be explored for future healthcare applications using WMSNs.
医疗保健应用被认为是无线传感器网络的有前途的领域，在这些领域中，可以使用无线医疗传感器网络（WMSN）来监测患者。当前的 WMSN 医疗保健研究趋势集中在患者可靠的通信、患者移动性和节能路由等方面。然而，如果在不考虑安全性的情况下在医疗保健应用中部署新技术，会使患者隐私容易受到攻击。此外，个人的生理数据非常敏感。因此，安全性是医疗保健应用的首要要求，特别是在患者有尴尬疾病的情况下。本文讨论了使用 WMSN 的医疗保健应用中的安全性和隐私问题。我们强调了一些使用无线医疗传感器网络的流行医疗保健项目，并讨论了它们的安全性。我们的目的是引发对这些关键问题的讨论，因为医疗保健应用的成功直接取决于患者的安全性和隐私，这既是出于伦理原因，也是出于法律原因。此外，我们讨论了现有安全机制存在的问题，并概述了此类应用的重要安全要求。此外，本文还回顾了最近提出的一些现有方案，这些方案旨在为无线医疗保健场景提供安全解决方案。最后，本文总结了需要探索的用于未来使用 WMSN 的医疗保健应用的开放安全研究问题。
