Data Protection and Privacy in Healthcare: Research and Innovations
Security and Privacy concerns of any type of data is a major issue in today's technology-driven
world. The term privacy is defined as an action where the data is kept hidden from either anonymous
user, server to avoid the use of malpractice of the data. In the world of distributed environment, the
processing and storage of such multidimensional data are also done dynamically that too at different
dynamic locations keeping various transparencies in mind. In such a scenario, the privacy of data is an
important concern. Primarily there are some privacy techniques such as Anonymization, Generalization,
Perturbation, Role-Based Access Control, Encryption, etc. Typically, according to researchers, data has
different phases during its lifecycle: storage of data, transition of data, transfer of data, and processing
of data. Existing privacy preserving techniques are still in maturing stages and strong privacy protection
is still an open research problem. There is research that happened in maintaining the privacy of
healthcare in various areas viz. IoT-privacy based healthcare system, Machine learning in Healthcare
data with privacy, maintaining the privacy of healthcare big-data, privacy preserving cloud storage of
healthcare data, etc.
Various advent technologies have been used in the healthcare domain. Machine learning
algorithms for prediction of certain health parameters/data/diseases/behavior, IoT based Healthcare
System, Data Analytics in Healthcare Blockchain Implementation in healthcare, Cloud-based
healthcare systems, etc. The use of wearable technology used in healthcare is used for continuous patient
monitoring, data streaming and sharing, use of data analysis to provide certain health services to the
patients. It also uses patients' past records, treatment given by healthcare experts/doctors, prescriptions,
allergic details of a patient, etc.
The Healthcare industry is one of the largest and rapidly developing industries. According to
IBM Global Business Services, Executive Report, 2012, the overall healthcare management is changing
from disease-centric to patient-centric. While on one side- The analysis of healthcare data plays an
important role in healthcare management, however on the other side- the privacy of patient's records
must be of equal concern. Preserving the privacy of medical data is not only an ethical but also a legal
requirement, posed by several data sharing regulations and policies worldwide, such as the Privacy Rule
of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Data Protection Act, etc. Also, we
are witnessing a wealth of approaches for preserving privacy in many phases of the healthcare
information lifecycle, including data collection, communication, and sharing, as well as the knowledge
management of healthcare information. To achieve privacy goals, these approaches employ various
techniques, such as cryptography, access control, and data Anonymization, Generalization,
Perturbation.
The edited book aims to bring out research in Data Protection and Privacy in healthcare and
addresses the issues of Privacy in newer technologies. The book will provide a forum for enthusiastic
researchers on all topics related to data privacy technologies, Policies, breaches in privacy considering
healthcare as a multidisciplinary domain.
The book also explores other timely aspects of privacy in areas such as usable security, the
Internet of Things, cloud computing, cryptography, and big data only with the context of the healthcare
field. Other popular topics include privacy-enhancing technologies, privacy preserving healthcare data
analytics, privacy aware wireless/mobile and embedded security, privacy policies. Also, the book
accepts peer-reviewed articles of wide interest under a general call and also features regular columns
on hot topics in privacy.
The edited book consists of 13 chapters from 34 authors from 8 different countries. A short
description of each chapter is given below