Information security of healthcare systems: using a biometric approach

Information security in healthcare and medical privacy is the current issue in modern society. The increase in technological complexity of medical devices and systems does not only improve efficiency, but also influences the risks of loss and change of personal health information. The most important problems of information security in healthcare are the access control to medical personal data and security data transmission. In this paper it is illustrated how these two problems can be solved with a biometric approach. The biometric technology using heart sounds and acoustic characteristics of the circulatory system allows for construction of flexible information security systems, adapted to the specific characteristics of medical electronic devices. Unlike other biometric technologies, the system of human authentication using heart sounds does not require active data input and provides a reliable working system. In this approach the information security system uses the data that a medical device gets during human condition monitoring. This feature does not complicate a medical device by system information security.