Abstract
The advances in the miniaturisation of electronic devices and the deployment of cheaper and faster data networks have propelled environments augmented with contextual and real-time information, such as smart homes and smart cities. These context-aware environments have opened the door to numerous opportunities for providing added-value, accurate and personalised services to citizens. In particular, smart healthcare, regarded as the natural evolution of electronic health and mobile health, contributes to enhance medical services and people’s welfare, while shortening waiting times and decreasing healthcare expenditure. However, the large number, variety and complexity of devices and systems involved in smart health systems involve a number of challenging considerations to be considered, particularly from security and privacy perspectives. To this aim, this article provides a thorough technical review on the deployment of secure smart health services, ranging from the very collection of sensors data (either related to the medical conditions of individuals or to their immediate context), the transmission of these data through wireless communication networks, to the final storage and analysis of such information in the appropriate health information systems. As a result, we provide practitioners with a comprehensive overview of the existing vulnerabilities and solutions in the technical side of smart healthcare.
Highlights
Smart healthcare (s-health for short) [1] is a paradigm that advocates for the provision of healthcare services through the use of context-aware environments, equipped with complex sensors, infrastructures and communications networks
We addressed the issue facing devices in the sensing layer, able to collect both user-centric attributes, such as cardiovascular activity, respiratory rate or location, and contextual attributes, such as air temperature or air pollution. These devices must be met with adequate accuracy, size, cost and power consumption to be suitable for smart health scenarios
With the aim of enabling physicians, medical staff and automated processes to analyse these data and provide real-time diagnosis, suggest personalised treatments and raise alarms to emergency services in specific situations, this study provides a throughout description of a large number of wireless technologies
Summary
Smart healthcare (s-health for short) [1] is a paradigm that advocates for the provision of healthcare services through the use of context-aware environments, equipped with complex sensors, infrastructures and communications networks. From sensors and IoT devices to ubiquitous services and decision-making systems, a plethora of information sources provide data able to augment knowledge on patients, their health status and their context, in order to make better decisions, diagnostics and treatments. With the generalised use of mobile devices (smartphones), a novel patientcentric highly-personalised healthcare paradigm emerged: mobile healthcare (m-health) [3]. M-health, considered a linchpin of the provision of today’s healthcare services, streamlines communications between patients and practitioners, and enables remote-monitoring and self-monitoring. Many mobile devices, namely smartphones, smartwatches and fitness trackers, already incorporate many sensors for health-oriented purposes
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