Secure lightweight protocols for medical device monitoring

Abstract

In the present days, the health care costs are sky-rocketing and most developed nations, including EU and US, are struggling to keep the costs under control. One of the areas is related to monitoring and control of medical appliances embedded to human bodies, such as insulin pumps as heart pacers. Fortunately, recent technology advances make it possible to monitor the medical appliances remotely, greatly decreasing the need for personal doctor visits. Naturally, remote wireless monitoring of such crucial appliances poses several formidable technological challenges including security of data communication, device authentication, attack resistance, and seamless connectivity. A remote monitoring protocol must be executed in a resource-constrained environment with energy efficiency. The recently proposed Diet Exchange for Host Identity Protocol (HIP) could solve most of security issues of remote appliance monitoring. However, it has to be developed to run in an embedded device environment; its security properties must be triple-checked against the stringent requirements; potential privacy issues must be addressed; protocol messages and cryptographic mechanisms must be adopted to wireless sensor standards. Although bearing high risks of provable security and patient faith, remote monitoring of health appliances could create breakthroughs in healthcare cost reduction and bring great benefits of individuals and the society.