mHealth Support System for Researchers and Participants

With the proliferation of mobile technologies, there is a significant increase of research using mobile devices in the medical and public health area. Mobile technology has improved the efficiency of healthcare delivery effectively. Mobile Health or mHealth is an interdisciplinary research area which has been active for more than a decade. Much research has been conducted and many software research tools (mHealth Support System) have been developed. Despite the time length, there is a significant gap in the mHealth research area regarding software research tools. Individual research groups are developing their own software research tool though there is a significant similarity among them. Most of the research tools are study or disease specific. Some of the tools are device specific (desktop/laptop, mobile phone, and tablet) and some are platform specific (web, android, iOS, and windows). This costs each research study their precious time, money, and workforce to develop similar service or software research tools. Based on the mHealth research characteristics, it is possible to design and implement a customizable generic software research tool. In this thesis, we have proposed, designed, and implemented a customizable generic mHealth software research tool. It has most of the common software research modules that are needed for an mHealth research study. These include real-time data collection, research participant management, research staff management, role based access control, research data anonymization, customizable surveys, report generation, study forum, and activity tracking. This software research tool is responsive and HIPAA compliant which makes it device independent, privacy-aware, and security-aware

Security and Privacy of Wearable Internet of Medical Things: Stakeholders Perspective

Internet of medical things (IoMT) is a fast-emerging technology in healthcare with a lot of scope for security vulnerabilities. Like any other internet connected device, IoMT is not immune to breaches. These breaches can not only affect the functionality of the device but also impact the security and privacy (S&P) of the data. The impact of these breaches can be devastating as well as life-threatening. The proposed methodology used a stakeholder-centric approach to Improve security of wearable IoMT devices. The proposed methodology firstly relied on a set of S&P attributes for wearable IoMTs that are identified to quantify security in these devices. Second, presented a method to quantify security in these devices. Finally, presented a case study to show how the proposed framework can be used to rank Wearable IoMTs in terms of S&P. This work aimed to (1) guide hesitant users when choosing a secure IoMT device, (2) encourage healthier competition among manufacturers of IoMT devices, and therefore, (3) improve the security of wearable IoMT devices

Privacy in Mobile Technology for Personal Healthcare

Information technology can improve the quality, efficiency, and cost of healthcare. In this survey, we examine the privacy requirements of \emphmobile\/ computing technologies that have the potential to transform healthcare. Such \emphmHealth\/ technology enables physicians to remotely monitor patients\u27 health, and enables individuals to manage their own health more easily. Despite these advantages, privacy is essential for any personal monitoring technology. Through an extensive survey of the literature, we develop a conceptual privacy framework for mHealth, itemize the privacy properties needed in mHealth systems, and discuss the technologies that could support privacy-sensitive mHealth systems. We end with a list of open research questions

An investigation of electronic Protected Health Information (e-PHI) privacy policy legislation in California for seniors using in-home health monitoring systems

This study examined privacy legislation in California to identify those electronic Protected Health Information (e-PHI) privacy policies that are suited to seniors using in-home health monitoring systems. Personal freedom and independence are essential to a person\u27s physical and mental health, and mobile technology applications provide a convenient and economical method for monitoring personal health. Many of these apps are written by third parties, however, which poses serious risks to patient privacy. Current federal regulations only cover applications and systems developed for use by covered entities and their business partners. As a result, the responsibility for protecting the privacy of the individual using health monitoring apps obtained from the open market falls squarely on the states. The goal of this study was to conduct an exploratory study of existing legislation to learn what was being done at the legislative level to protect the security and privacy of users using in-home mobile health monitoring systems. Specifically, those developed and maintained by organizations or individuals not classified as covered entities under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The researcher chose California due to its reputation for groundbreaking privacy laws and high population of seniors. The researcher conducted a content analysis of California state legislation, federal and industry best practices, and extant literature to identify current and proposed legislation regarding the protection of e-PHI data of those using in-home health monitoring systems. The results revealed that in-home health monitoring systems show promise, but they are not without risk. The use of smartphones, home networks, and downloadable apps puts patient privacy at risk, and combining systems that were not initially intended to function together carries additional concerns. Factors such as different privacy-protection profiles, opt-in/opt-out defaults, and privacy policies that are difficult to read or are not adhered to by the application also put user data at risk. While this examination showed that there is legislative support governing the development of the technology of individual components of the in-home health monitoring systems, it appears that the in-home health monitoring system as a whole is an immature technology and not in wide enough use to warrant legislative attention. In addition – unlike the challenges posed by the development and maintenance of the technology of in-home health monitoring systems – there is ample legislation to protect user privacy in mobile in-home health monitoring systems developed and maintained by those not classified as covered entities under HIPAA. Indeed, the volume of privacy law covering the individual components of the system is sufficient to ensure that the privacy of the system as a whole would not be compromised if deployed as suggested in this study. Furthermore, the legislation evaluated over the course of this study demonstrated consistent balance between technical, theoretical, and legal stakeholders. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in this area by conducting an in-depth review of current and proposed legislation in the state of California for the past five years. The results will help provide future direction for researchers and developers as they struggle to meet the current and future needs of patients using this technology as it matures. There are practical applications for this study as well. The seven themes identified during this study can serve as a valuable starting point for state legislators to evaluate existing and proposed legislation within the context of medical data to identify the need for legislation to assist in protecting user data against fraud, identity theft, and other damaging consequences that occur because of a data breach

The Future of HIPAA in the Cloud

This white paper examines how cloud computing generates new privacy challenges for both healthcare providers and patients, and how American health privacy laws may be interpreted or amended to address these challenges. Given the current implementation of Meaningful Use rules for health information technology and the Omnibus HIPAA Rule in health care generally, the stage is now set for a distinctive law of “health information” to emerge. HIPAA has come of age of late, with more aggressive enforcement efforts targeting wayward healthcare providers and entities. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to assure that health privacy and all the values it is meant to protect are actually vindicated in an era of ever faster and more pervasive data transfer and analysis. After describing how cloud computing is now used in healthcare, this white paper examines nascent and emerging cloud applications. Current regulation addresses many of these scenarios, but also leaves some important decision points ahead. Business associate agreements between cloud service providers and covered entities will need to address new risks. To meaningfully consent to new uses of protected health information, patients will need access to more sophisticated and granular methods of monitoring data collection, analysis, and use. Policymakers should be concerned not only about medical records, but also about medical reputations used to deny opportunities. In order to implement these and other recommendations, more funding for technical assistance for health privacy regulators is essential

The Travel of Privacy Standards and Regulations in Healthcare

Increasing technology dependence by individuals and organizations has resulted in a profusion of information privacy standards and regulations created to protect personal information. There are expectations of universality in the scope of standards and regulations but also, in most cases, some degree of flexibility that allows for adaptation and compliance with local requirements and influences. Our research into the privacy policy development at a health information exchange (HIE) finds that in practice, standards and regulations are subject to multiple translations that can result in policies and practices which inhibit the HIE’s goal of facilitating data exchange. Translation must therefore be appropriately managed by the HIE to ensure data exchange is not constrained. This has important theoretical and practical implications for health information privacy in an increasingly technology pervasive world, by contrasting the global view with the local view of information privacy, through an application of healthcare standards setting and execution

Agent-Oriented Privacy-Based Information Brokering Architecture for Healthcare Environments

Healthcare industry is facing a major reform at all levels—locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Healthcare services and systems become very complex and comprise of a vast number of components (software systems, doctors, patients, etc.) that are characterized by shared, distributed and heterogeneous information sources with varieties of clinical and other settings. The challenge now faced with decision making, and management of care is to operate effectively in order to meet the information needs of healthcare personnel. Currently, researchers, developers, and systems engineers are working toward achieving better efficiency and quality of service in various sectors of healthcare, such as hospital management, patient care, and treatment. This paper presents a novel information brokering architecture that supports privacy-based information gathering in healthcare. Architecturally, the brokering is viewed as a layer of services where a brokering service is modeled as an agent with a specific architecture and interaction protocol that are appropriate to serve various requests. Within the context of brokering, we model privacy in terms of the entities ability to hide or reveal information related to its identities, requests, and/or capabilities. A prototype of the proposed architecture has been implemented to support information-gathering capabilities in healthcare environments using FIPA-complaint platform JADE

Protecting Health Privacy in an Era of Big Data Processing and Cloud Computing

This Article examines how new technologies generate privacy challenges for both healthcare providers and patients, and how American health privacy laws may be interpreted or amended to address these challenges. Given the current implementation of Meaningful Use rules for health information technology and the Omnibus HIPAA Rule in health care generally, the stage is now set for a distinctive law of “health information” to emerge. HIPAA has come of age of late, with more aggressive enforcement efforts targeting wayward healthcare providers and entities. Nevertheless, more needs to be done to assure that health privacy and all the values it is meant to protect are actually vindicated in an era of ever faster and more pervasive data transfer and analysis. After describing how cloud computing is now used in healthcare, this Article examines nascent and emerging cloud applications and big data processing methods. Current regulation addresses many of these scenarios, but also leaves some important decision points ahead. Business associate agreements between cloud service providers and covered entities will need to address new risks. To meaningfully consent to new uses of protected health information, patients will need access to more sophisticated and granular methods of monitoring data collection, analysis, and use. Policymakers should be concerned not only about medical records, but also about medical reputations used to deny opportunities. To implement these and other recommendations, more funding for technical assistance for health privacy regulators is essential

Designing Human-Centered Collective Intelligence

Human-Centered Collective Intelligence (HCCI) is an emergent research area that seeks to bring together major research areas like machine learning, statistical modeling, information retrieval, market research, and software engineering to address challenges pertaining to deriving intelligent insights and solutions through the collaboration of several intelligent sensors, devices and data sources. An archetypal contextual CI scenario might be concerned with deriving affect-driven intelligence through multimodal emotion detection sources in a bid to determine the likability of one movie trailer over another. On the other hand, the key tenets to designing robust and evolutionary software and infrastructure architecture models to address cross-cutting quality concerns is of keen interest in the “Cloud” age of today. Some of the key quality concerns of interest in CI scenarios span the gamut of security and privacy, scalability, performance, fault-tolerance, and reliability. I present recent advances in CI system design with a focus on highlighting optimal solutions for the aforementioned cross-cutting concerns. I also describe a number of design challenges and a framework that I have determined to be critical to designing CI systems. With inspiration from machine learning, computational advertising, ubiquitous computing, and sociable robotics, this literature incorporates theories and concepts from various viewpoints to empower the collective intelligence engine, ZOEI, to discover affective state and emotional intent across multiple mediums. The discerned affective state is used in recommender systems among others to support content personalization. I dive into the design of optimal architectures that allow humans and intelligent systems to work collectively to solve complex problems. I present an evaluation of various studies that leverage the ZOEI framework to design collective intelligence

Open IOT-based telemedicine hub and infrastructure

In this paper, a unique healthcare solution is described that supports the even more effective operation of the hospital information systems. The main question is whether the emerging opportunities of the Internet of things devices can also be exploited in the industrial hospital information system landscape. This demonstrated research describes the most feasible way to integrate the Internet of things capability into hospital information production systems. The initial goal was the design and implementation of a single, unified telemedicine hub offering community-based solution for integrated medical systems. This solution allows the intercepted information to be collected and interpreted at community level. The designed and implemented system acts as a transmitter between the physician and patient. The software solution operates with sensor-based information collected from the individual. Emerging Internet of things devices and solutions open new horizons for today’s health care systems. The presented and detailed system provides the ability to real-time health-monitoring and in-depth health analyzing through open application programming interfaces. The telemedicine hub system makes it easier to integrate the Internet of things capability into the operating health care systems