Cloud Data Privacy Preserving Model for Health Information Systems Based on Multi Factor Authentication

Abstract

With cloud computing (CC) becoming popular in recent years, variety of institutions, organizations, businesses and individual users are creating interest. They are adopting the technology in order to take advantage of shared web applications, low infrastructure cost, utility and distributed computing, cluster computing as well as reliable IT architecture. In the area of health, Cloud Health Information Systems (CHIS) play a key role not only on the healthcare businesses but patients as well. On the patient side, CHIS aid in sharing of medical data and health information, timely access of critical patient information and coordination of clinical services. Patients, who continue to demand for instantaneous and quality healthcare services are now able to access the services from experts even when they are not necessarily in the same physical location. This is being aided by proliferation of telemedicine through hosted cloud architecture. From the business perspective, CC has helped to cut down operational expenses by way of cost-effective clinical information system infrastructure through the implementation of a distributed platform. The platform has therefore saved businesses millions of dollars that would have gone to infrastructural and human resource investment. Even with these immense opportunities, cloud computing uptake has been serious inhibited by the privacy and security concerns. Due to the sensitivity of personal health information, businesses and individuals are apprehensive when it comes to adopting the technology or releasing the data to the cloud. This study is a results discussion of an enhanced model for attainment of data privacy on the cloud through use of multi factor authentication.