Security in E-Health Applications

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in e-health applications are acquiring an increasing importance due to the widespread diffusion of wearable vital sign sensors and location tags which can track both healthcare personnel and patient status location continuously in real-time mode. Despite the increased range of potential application frameworks the security breach between existing sensor network characteristics and the requirements of medical applications remains unresolved. Devising a sensor network architecture which complies with the security mechanisms is not a trivial task since the WSN devices are extremely limited in terms of power, computation and communication. This chapter presents an analysis of various WSN security techniques from the perspective of healthcare applications, and takes into consideration the significance of security to the efficient distribution of ubiquitous computing solutions.