A privacy-preserving framework for smart context-aware healthcare applications

Smart connected devices are widely used in healthcare to achieve improved well-being, quality of life, and security of citizens. While improving quality of healthcare, such devices generate data containing sensitive patient information where unauthorized access constitutes breach of privacy leading to catastrophic outcomes for an individual as well as financial loss to the governing body via regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation. Furthermore, while mobility afforded by smart devices enables ease of monitoring, portability, and pervasive processing, it introduces challenges with respect to scalability, reliability, and context awareness. This paper is focused on privacy preservation within smart context-aware healthcare emphasizing privacy assurance challenges within Electronic Transfer of Prescription. We present a case for a comprehensive, coherent, and dynamic privacy-preserving system for smart healthcare to protect sensitive user data. Based on a thorough analysis of existing privacy preservation models, we propose an enhancement to the widely used Salford model to achieve privacy preservation against masquerading and impersonation threats. The proposed model therefore improves privacy assurance for smart healthcare while addressing unique challenges with respect to context-aware mobility of such applications.