Towards a Secure and Sustainable Internet of Medical Things (IoMT): Requirements, Design Challenges, Security Techniques, and Future Trends

Abstract

Recent advances in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, mini-hardware manufacturing, and micro computing have led to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT is integrated with medical devices in order to enable better treatment, cost-effective medical solutions, improved patient monitoring, and enhanced personalized healthcare. This has led to the development of more complex and heterogeneous Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) systems that have their own operating systems and protocols. Even though such pervasive and low-cost sensing devices can bring about enormous changes in the healthcare sector, these are prone to numerous security and privacy issues. Security is thus a major challenge in these critical systems, one that inhibits their widespread adoption. However, significant inroads have been made by the on-going research, which powers the IoMT applications by incorporating prevalent security measures. In this regard, this paper highlights the significance of implementing key security measures, and essential aspects of the IoMT that make it useful for interconnecting various internal and external working domains of healthcare. This paper presents state-of-the-art techniques for securing IoMT systems, in terms of data transmission, collection, and storage. Furthermore, the paper also explores various security requirements, inherent design challenges, and various security techniques that could make the IoMT more secure and sustainable. Finally, the paper gives a panoramic view of the current status of research in the field and outlines some future research directions in this area.