Deployment of Secure Mobile Agents for Medical Information Systems

Abstract

Changes in global population and demography, and advances in medicine have led to elderly population growth, creating aging societies from which elderly medical care has evolved. In addition, with the elderly susceptible to chronic diseases, this together with the changing lifestyles of young adults have not only pushed up patient numbers of chronic diseases, but also effected into younger patients. These problems have become the major focus for the health care industry. In response to patient demand and the huge shortage of medical resources, we propose remote healthcare medical information systems that combine patient physiological data acquisition equipment with real-time health care analyses. Since remote health care systems are structured around the Internet, in addition to considering the numerous public systems spread across insecure heterogeneous networks, compatibility among heterogeneous networks will also be another concern. To address the aforementioned issues, mobile agents are adopted. With a mobile agent’s characteristics of easy adaptability to heterogeneity and autonomy, the problem of heterogeneous network environments can be tackled. To construct a hierarchical safe access control mechanism for monitoring and control of patient data in order to provide the most appropriate medical treatment, we also propose to use the Chinese Remainder Theorem and discrete logarithm to classify different levels of monitoring staff and hence, to grant permission and access according to their authorized levels. We expect the methods proposed can improve medical care quality and reduce medical resource wastage, while ensuring patient privacy. Finally, security analysis of the system is conducted by simulating a variety of typical attacks, from which it can be concluded that the constructed remote healthcare information system be secure.