Abstract
The healthcare sector is rapidly being transformed to one that operates in new computing environments. With researchers increasingly committed to finding and expanding healthcare solutions to include the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, there is a need to monitor more closely than ever the data being collected, shared, processed, and stored. The advent of cloud, IoT, and edge computing paradigms poses huge risks towards the privacy of data, especially, in the healthcare environment. However, there is a lack of comprehensive research focused on seeking efficient and effective solutions that ensure data privacy in the healthcare domain. The data being collected and processed by healthcare applications is sensitive, and its manipulation by malicious actors can have catastrophic repercussions. This paper discusses the current landscape of privacy-preservation solutions in IoT and edge healthcare applications. It describes the common techniques adopted by researchers to integrate privacy in their healthcare solutions. Furthermore, the paper discusses the limitations of these solutions in terms of their technical complexity, effectiveness, and sustainability. The paper closes with a summary and discussion of the challenges of safeguarding privacy in IoT and edge healthcare solutions which need to be resolved for future applications.
Highlights
Recent years have seen an incredible revolution in the healthcare industry
Edge computing paradigm takes place closer to the physical Internet of Things (IoT) units which in turns plays a critical role as a midpoint to lower latency and saves bandwidth to the cloud
As the data which is collected by IoT devices is a one-time venture and cannot be modified once collected, the storage of these one-time collections as blockchain transactions is an effective privacy-preserving solution [13]
Summary
Recent years have seen an incredible revolution in the healthcare industry. The Internet of Things (IoT) has added an altogether other dimension to healthcare technology. The nature of edge services demands an unconventional set of security and privacy-preserving mechanisms These must be in accordance with its characteristics (i.e., lightweight, efficient, and resource-constrained and distributed multiple sources of incoming data) [12, 14]. Both the IoT and edge computing offer sophisticated services that can shape and improve the modern healthcare sector; their distributed nature needs to be kept in check in order to ensure the privacy of users’ data including the user patterns, identity, and location [7].
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