Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

How to Realize Device Interoperability and Information Security in mHealth Applications

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2018)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1024))

  • 541 Accesses

Abstract

More and more people suffer from chronic diseases such as the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This leads to very high treatment costs every year, as such patients require a periodic screening of their condition. However, many of these checks can be performed at home by the patients themselves. This enables physicians to focus on actual emergencies. Modern smart devices such as Smartphones contribute to the success of these telemedical approaches. So-called mHealth apps combine the usability and versatility of Smartphones with the high accuracy and reliability of medical devices for home use. However, patients often face the problem of how to connect medical devices to their Smartphones (the device interoperability problem). Moreover, many patients reject mHealth apps due to the lack of control over their sensitive health data (the information security problem).

In our work, we discuss the usage of the Privacy Management Platform (PMP) to solve these problems. So, we describe the structure of mHealth apps and present a real-world COPD application. From this application we derive relevant functions of an mHealth app, in which device interoperability or information security is an issue. We extend the PMP in order to provide support for these recurring functions. Finally, we evaluate the utility of these PMP extensions based on the real-world mHealth app.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    See http://chroniconline.eu.

  2. 2.

    See https://vitalograph.com/product/162427.

  3. 3.

    See https://ifttt.com.

  4. 4.

    PATRON is an acronym for “Privacy in Stream Processing”.

  5. 5.

    See https://www.android.com/wear.

  6. 6.

    Location based services in general constitute a severe threat to a user’s privacy [19].

References

  1. Bai, Y., Dai, L., Li, J.: Issues and challenges in securing eHealth systems. Int. J. E-Health Med. Commun. 5(1), 1–19 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bhandari, V.: Enabling Programmable Self with HealthVault. O’Reilly Media Inc., Beijing (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bitsaki, M., et al.: An integrated mHealth solution for enhancing patients’ health online. In: Lacković, I., Vasic, D. (eds.) MBEC 2014. IP, vol. 45, pp. 695–698. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11128-5_173

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Bitsaki, M., et al.: ChronicOnline: implementing a mHealth solution for monitoring and early alerting in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Health Inform. J. 23(3), 197–207 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Bluetooth SIG Inc.: GATT specifications. Technical report (2017). https://www.bluetooth.com/specifications/gatt

  6. Chan, M., Estève, D., Fourniols, J.Y., Escriba, C., Campo, E.: Smart wearable systems: current status and future challenges. Artif. Intell. Med. 56(3), 137–156 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cherdantseva, Y., Hilton, J.: A reference model of information assurance & security. In: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, ARES 2013, pp. 546–555 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Dhillon, G., Backhouse, J.: Technical opinion: information system security management in the new millennium. Commun. ACM 43(7), 125–128 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Enck, W., et al.: TaintDroid: an information-flow tracking system for realtime privacy monitoring on smartphones. In: Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2010, pp. 393–407 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Gardner, R.W., Garera, S., Pagano, M.W., Green, M., Rubin, A.D.: Securing medical records on smart phones. In: Proceedings of the First ACM Workshop on Security and Privacy in Medical and Home-Care Systems, SPIMACS 2009, pp. 31–40 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Gupta, N.: Inside Bluetooth Low Energy. Artech House Publishers, Boston (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hester, J., et al.: Amulet: an energy-efficient, multi-application wearable platform. In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems, SenSys 2016, pp. 216–229 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Hsu, H.H., Peng, W.J., Shih, T.K., Pai, T.W., Man, K.L.: Smartphone indoor localization with accelerometer and gyroscope. In: Proceedings of the 2014 17th International Conference on Network-Based Information Systems. NBiS 2014, pp. 465–469 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  14. IEEE 11073 Standards Committee: ISO/IEC/IEEE health informatics-Personal health device communication-Part 20601: application profile-Optimized exchange protocol. ISO/IEEE 11073–20601:2014 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Jafari, M., Safavi-Naini, R., Sheppard, N.P.: A rights management approach to protection of privacy in a cloud of electronic health records. In: Proceedings of the 11th Annual ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management, DRM 2011, pp. 23–30 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Knöll, M., Moar, M.: On the importance of locations in therapeutic serious games: review on current health games and how they make use of the urban landscape. In: Proceedings of the 2011 5th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare and Workshops. PervasiveHealth 2011, pp. 538–545 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kouris, I., Koutsouris, D.: Identifying risky environments for COPD patients using smartphones and Internet of Things objects. Int. J. Comput. Intell. Stud. 3(1), 1–17 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Kumar, S., Nilsen, W., Pavel, M., Srivastava, M.: Mobile health: revolutionizing healthcare through transdisciplinary research. Computer 46(1), 28–35 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Marcelino, L., Silva, C.: Location privacy concerns in mobile applications. In: Rocha, Á., Reis, L.P. (eds.) Developments and Advances in Intelligent Systems and Applications. SCI, vol. 718, pp. 241–249. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58965-7_17

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Mare, S., Sorber, J., Shin, M., Cornelius, C., Kotz, D.: Hide-n-Sense: preserving privacy efficiently in wireless mHealth. Mob. Netw. Appl. 19(3), 331–344 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Mattila, E., et al.: Empowering citizens for well-being and chronic disease management with wellness diary. IEEE Trans. Inf Technol. Biomed. 14(2), 456–463 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Mi, X., Qian, F., Zhang, Y., Wang, X.F.: An empirical characterization of IFTTT: ecosystem, usage, and performance. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Internet Measurement Conference, IMC 2017, pp. 398–404 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Milošević, M., Shrove, M.T., Jovanov, E.: Applications of smartphones for ubiquitous health monitoring and wellbeing management. J. Inf. Technol. Appl. 1(1), 7–15 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Mishra, S.M.: Wearable Android: Android Wear and Google FIT App Development. Wiley, Hoboken (2015)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  25. Moehrke, J.: Audit trail and node authentication. Techical report, IHE International, August 2017. https://wiki.ihe.net/index.php/Audit_Trail_and_Node_Authentication

  26. Moehrke, J.: Mobile access to health documents (MHD). Technical report, IHE International, October 2017. https://wiki.ihe.net/index.php/Mobile_access_to_Health_Documents_(MHD)

  27. Murad, A., Schooley, B., Abed, Y.: A secure mHealth application for EMS: design and implementation. In: Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Wireless Health, WH 2013, pp. 15:1–15:2 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Murnane, E.L., Huffaker, D., Kossinets, G.: Mobile health apps: adoption, adherence, and abandonment. In: Adjunct Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers, UbiComp/ISWC 2015 Adjunct, pp. 261–264 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  29. O’Donoghue, J., Herbert, J.: Data management within mHealth environments: patient sensors, mobile devices, and databases. J. Data Inf. Qual. 4(1), 5:1–5:20 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Schweitzer, J., Synowiec, C.: The economics of eHealth and mHealth. J. Health Commun. 17(Supplement 1), 73–81 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Shmueli, E., Vaisenberg, R., Elovici, Y., Glezer, C.: Database encryption: an overview of contemporary challenges and design considerations. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 38(3), 29–34 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Siewiorek, D.: Generation smartphone. IEEE Spectr. 49(9), 54–58 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Silva, B.M., Rodrigues, J.J., de la Torre Díez, I., López-Coronado, M., Saleem, K.: Mobile-health: a review of current state in 2015. J. Biomed. Inform. 56(C), 265–272 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Stach, C., et al.: The AVARE PATRON: a holistic privacy approach for the Internet of Things. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Security and Cryptography, SECRYPT 2018, pp. 372–379 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  35. Stach, C., et al.: PATRON – Datenschutz in Datenstromverarbeitungssystemen. In: Informatik 2017: Digitale Kulturen, Tagungsband der 47. Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), 25–29 September 2017, Chemnitz. LNI, vol. 275, pp. 1085–1096 (2017). (in German)

    Google Scholar 

  36. Stach, C., Dürr, F., Mindermann, K., Palanisamy, S.M., Wagner, S.: How a pattern-based privacy system contributes to improve context recognition. In: Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops, CoMoRea 2018, pp. 238–243 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  37. Stach, C., Mitschang, B.: Privacy management for mobile platforms - a review of concepts and approaches. In: Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE 14th International Conference on Mobile Data Management, MDM 2013, pp. 305–313 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  38. Stach, C., Mitschang, B.: Design and implementation of the Privacy Management Platform. In: Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE 15th International Conference on Mobile Data Management. MDM 2014, pp. 69–72 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  39. Stach, C., Mitschang, B.: Secure Candy Castle – a prototype for privacy-aware mHealth apps. In: Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 17th International Conference on Mobile Data Management, MDM 2016, pp. 361–364 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  40. Stach, C., Mitschang, B.: CURATOR–a secure shared object store: design, implementation, and evaluation of a manageable, secure, and performant data exchange mechanism for smart devices. In: Proceedings of the 33rd ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing, DTTA 2018, pp. 533–540 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Stach, C., Steimle, F., Mitschang, B.: The Privacy Management Platform: an enabler for device interoperability and information security in mHealth applications. In: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Health Informatics, HEALTHINF 2018, pp. 27–38 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  42. Stach, C., Steimle, F., Franco da Silva, A.C.: TIROL: the extensible interconnectivity layer for mHealth applications. In: Damaševičius, R., Mikašytė, V. (eds.) ICIST 2017. CCIS, vol. 756, pp. 190–202. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67642-5_16

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  43. Steimle, F., Wieland, M.: ECHO – an mHealth solution to support treatment of chronic patients. In: Proceedings of the 8th ZEUS Workshop, ZEUS 2016, pp. 64–67 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  44. Steimle, F., Wieland, M., Mitschang, B., Wagner, S., Leymann, F.: Extended provisioning, security and analysis techniques for the ECHO health data management system. Computing 99(2), 183–201 (2017)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  45. Stollmann Entwicklungs- und Vertriebs-GmbH: Terminal I/O Profile: Client implementation guide. Technical report, Telit (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  46. de Toledo, P., Jimenez, S., del Pozo, F., Roca, J., Alonso, A., Hernandez, C.: Telemedicine experience for chronic care in COPD. IEEE Trans. Inf Technol. Biomed. 10(3), 567–573 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Ur, B., McManus, E., Pak Yong Ho, M., Littman, M.L.: Practical trigger-action programming in the smart home. In: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014, pp. 803–812 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  48. Weerasinghe, D., Rajarajan, M., Rakocevic, V.: Device data protection in mobile healthcare applications. In: Weerasinghe, D. (ed.) eHealth 2008. LNICST, vol. 0001, pp. 82–89. Springer, Heidelberg (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00413-1_10

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  49. Wieland, M., et al.: Towards a rule-based manufacturing integration assistant. Procedia CIRP 57(1), 213–218 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  50. Wieland, M., et al.: Rule-based integration of smart services using the manufacturing service bus. In: Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE 14th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing, UIC 2017, pp. 22:1–22:8 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  51. World Health Organization: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Technical report, WHO Media Centre (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  52. Xie, H., Gu, T., Tao, X., Lu, J.: A reliability-augmented particle filter for magnetic fingerprinting based indoor localization on smartphone. IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput. 15(8), 1877–1892 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Ye, H., Gu, T., Tao, X., Lu, J.: Scalable floor localization using barometer on smartphone. Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 16(16), 2557–2571 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This paper is part of the PATRON research project which is commissioned by the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung gGmbH. The authors would like to thank the BW-Stiftung for the funding of this research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Parallel and Distributed Systems, University of Stuttgart, Universitätsstraße 38, 70569, Stuttgart, Germany

    Christoph Stach, Frank Steimle & Bernhard Mitschang

Authors
  1. Christoph Stach
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Frank Steimle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Bernhard Mitschang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoph Stach .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Alberto Cliquet Jr.

  2. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Sheldon Wiebe

  3. College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA

    Paul Anderson

  4. University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Giovanni Saggio

  5. Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

    Reyer Zwiggelaar

  6. LIBPhys, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Hugo Gamboa

  7. Instituto de Telecomunicações and Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ana Fred

  8. Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute, Universidade da Madeira, Funchal, Portugal

    Sergi Bermúdez i Badia

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Stach, C., Steimle, F., Mitschang, B. (2019). How to Realize Device Interoperability and Information Security in mHealth Applications. In: Cliquet Jr., A., et al. Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies. BIOSTEC 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1024. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29196-9_12

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29196-9_12

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-29195-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-29196-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation