A Security Framework for Electronic Medical Record

Abstract

Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is basically the digital equivalent of paper records, or charts at a clinician’s office. EMR assist and make easier the services rendered by a wide range of medical practitioners such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists and many others, hence, increasing the safety of patients. It's importance in the health sector cannot be overemphasized. The designed framework aims at identifying security challenges in the use and adoption of EMR, to design and implement a framework that will address issues identified in the use and adoption of EMR. This study presented a security framework to improve the security and privacy issues of EMRs by adopting Role Based Access Control and RSA cryptography. Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model was used because of its flexibility to support minimal functionality and its simplistic mode of assigning roles and permissions to users. In conclusion, this research was able to improve the security of EMRs and hence will increase its acceptance by health institutions which will bring about improved health services, especially in developing countries were manual record system are still prominent.