Healthcare system is moving from an organization-centered to a process-based care. Process-based
healthcare system provides distributed healthcare services based on emerging communication
technologies and advanced software architecture, so called eHealth. eHealth services can be achieved at
a lower cost than direct human interactions-based healthcare, in particularly in remote areas. Recently,
next-generation eHealth services making use of social applications and cloud computing technologies are
being developed. They are called eHealth 2.0 and eHealth Cloud, respectively. eHealth 2.0 is a promising
new Web 2.0 technology that allows for an unprecedented level of collaboration between patients,
caregivers and physicians. It is an emerging trend of health-centric blogs, wikis, social networks, tags, tag
clouds and podcasts that promise to bring about a whole revolution in the way that health care is
delivered. Patients now have the opportunity to share treatment experiences with other patients and
garner comfort during difficult times. Patients are also able to link up with physicians around the world,
who donate their time to helping others within this online community. Furthermore, physicians are able to
share information with other physicians. This level of collaboration in the world of medicine ensures a
higher quality of health care for the world, as well as serving as a catalyst to speed up research that has
the potential to cure diseases that incapacitate or take the lives of millions around the world.
eHealth Cloud, on the other hand, can closely link the various medical departments and coordinate
among medical institutions in the business. With achieving a strong information technology resources and
optimizing patient flow, cloud computing improves efficiency in the use of medical resources. As
compared to setting up their own infrastructures, cloud users can tremendously save their capital
expenditures via the usage of cloud computing.
However, both eHealth 2.0 and eHealth Cloud are facing privacy and security challenges. In cloud
computing environment, there are numerous participating entities such as information owners, providers
and consumers, and multiple platforms possibly with different security control mechanisms. Cloud
resources cannot be securely managed by traditional security mechanisms. For example, in the area of
access control, the challenges are: cloud servers are not entitled to access the outsourced data content
for data confidentiality; the data resources themselves are not physically under the full control of the
owner any more.
In this project, we are identifying new security challenges emerging in the e-health cloud environment
and investigation new algorithms, security models, protocols, methodologies, and tools that are suitable
for this new environment.