Privacy and Security in e-Health Applications

The introduction of e-Health and extramural applications in the personal healthcare domain has raised serious concerns about security and privacy of health data. Novel digital technologies require other security approaches in addition to the traditional “purely physical” approach. Furthermore, privacy is becoming an increasing concern in domains that deal with sensitive information such as healthcare, which cannot absorb the costs of security abuses in the system. Once sensitive information about an individual’s health is uncovered and social damage is done, there is no way to revoke the information or to restitute the individual. Therefore, in addition to legal means, it is very important to provide and enforce privacy and security in healthcare by technological means. In this chapter, the authors analyze privacy and security requirements in healthcare, explain their importance and review both classical and novel security technologies that could fulfill these requirements.