Augmenting security for electronic patient health record (ePHR) monitoring system using cryptographic key management schemes

Abstract

Security plays a major role in most of the fields including pharmaceutical field. Authorization and Authentication are the key concepts in supporting notable areas of the cyber-health world. HIPAA's (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) ultimate focus is to preserve the privacy of the health records of an individual without disclosing it and preventing the data from unauthorized access. A complaint key management solution is applied over the patient's health records to reduce the risk factor while engaging with cryptographic mechanisms. Though there are many existing cryptographic algorithms such as Elliptic curve cryptography, Elgammal's key exchange algorithm which provides security to the access of patient's health records, the proposed key management solution will overlay the same variant of security to the Electronic Health Records (EHR). This paper provides the countermeasures for improving security and suggests a key recovery mechanism for the protection of keys used in the security mechanism.