Secure data communication over mobile devices in health networks.

Abstract

The continuous developments in the field of mobile computing have made it possible to use mobile devices for healthcare applications. These devices can be used by healthcare providers to collect and share patients' medical data. However, with increasing adoption of mobile devices that carry confidential data, organizations need to secure the data from unauthorized users and mobile device theft. When unencrypted data is transmitted from one device to another it faces various security threats from malicious code, unsecure networks, unauthorized access, and data theft. The objective of this research is to develop a secure data sharing solution customized for healthcare environments, which would allow authorized users to securely access and share patients' data over mobile devices. We identify the vulnerable locations in mobile communication network that can possibly be exploited by unauthorized users or malicious code to access the confidential data, and develop an efficient security protocol that provides end to end data protection without compromising device's performance. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed data sharing architecture, a prototype customized for Point-of-Care-Testing (POCT) scenarios was built in collaboration with Northern Health, Prince George. Simulations were performed to analyze and validate our solution against the pre-defined requirement criteria. --P. ii.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b178382