A Context-Policy-based Approach to Access Control for Healthcare Data Protection

Abstract

Fueled by the emergence of IoT-enabled medical sensors and big data analytics, nations all over the world are widely adopting digitalization of healthcare systems. This is certainly a positive trend for improving the entire spectrum of quality of care, but this convenience is also posing a huge challenge on the security of healthcare data. For ensuring privacy and protection of healthcare data, access control is regarded as one of the first-line-of-defense mechanisms. As none of the traditional enterprise access control models can completely cater to the need of the healthcare domain which includes a myriad of contexts, in this paper, we present a context-policy-based access control scheme. Our scheme relies on the eTRON cybersecurity architecture for tamper-resistance and cryptographic functions, and leverages a context-specific blend of classical discretionary and role-based access models for incorporation into legacy systems. Moreover, our scheme adheres to key recommendations of prominent statutory and technical guidelines including HIPAA and HL7. The protocols involved in the proposed access control system have been delineated, and a proof-of-concept implementation has been carried out - along with a comparison with other systems, which clearly suggests that our approach is more responsive to different contexts for protecting healthcare data.