Centralized management of medical big data in Intensive Care Unit: A security analysis

Abstract

The digital evolution of computing environments has affected the collection and management of medical data. Since there is a constantly growing number of remote sensors and medical systems, which augment the volume of medical data, a new challenge about the management of these big data is created. As the legacy systems in effect do not have the ability to manage this rate of data efficiently, it is of great importance to address this challenge following a different approach. In this particular unit of hospitals, ICU, the usage of complex medical systems in order to provide adequate quality of healthcare services and the velocity of the decision making process, which is performed by intensivists, are critical. To this end, an approach to this problem constitutes the Centralized Management (CM) of medical data in Intensive Care Unit's(ICU) environment. The autoscalling computing environment, which will be orchestrated in the context of operations of the CM will ease tasks, such as the aggregation of medical data by different sources, the performance of analytic functions and it will enhance the intensivists' cognition. Moreover, this type of management leads to security and privacy challenges that should be addressed in order to assemble a highly trusted environment both in technical and functional level. As a result, prior to the adaptation of the CM in ICU, specific security, as well as privacy guidelines, should be determined.