Data model to enhance the security and privacy of healthcare data

Abstract

With an immense amount of data and growing array of end-user devices, the security and privacy in healthcare is becoming a challenge. Shifting technologies and changing regulations are required to refocus on security techniques for the protection of sensitive healthcare data. For the storage and exchange of healthcare data, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is widely used. But, while using the XML and its technologies, the security and privacy of the data as governed by relevant laws and regulations must be complied with. In this paper, we propose a data model which enhances security and privacy of the data by attaching security levels with data itself which is expressed in the form of XML. The security levels of the data and all type of users accessing the data are defined inside an XML schema.