Abstract
The emergence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in healthcare applications is gaining momentum through the increasing array of wearable vital sign sensors and location tags which can track both healthcare personnel and patient status/ location continuously in real-time mode. Despite the increased range of potential application frameworks — ranging from pre-hospital, in-hospital, ambulatory and home monitoring, to long-term database collection for longitudinal trend analysis — the security gap between existing WSN designs and the requirements of medical applications remains unresolved.
Generally, WSN devices are extremely limited in terms of power, computation, and communication. They are often deployed in accessible areas, thus increasing security vulnerabilities. The dynamic ad hoc topology, multicast transmission, location awareness, critical data prioritisation, and co-ordination of diverse sensors of healthcare applications further exacerbate the security challenges. This paper presents an analysis of various WSN security mechanisms from the demanding perspective of healthcare applications, and considers the importance of security to the successful deployment of pervasive computing solutions in the healthcare industry.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Zhao F and Guibas L: ’Wireless Sensor Networks: an information processing approach’, Morgan Kaufmann, Elsevier (2004).
’Special Issue on Pervasive Healthcare’, IEEE Trans Inform Technol Biomed, 8, No 3 (2004).
Stanford V: ’Pervasive health care applications face tough security challenges’, Pervasive Computing, IEEE, 1, pp 8–12 (2002).
Adrian P, John S and David W: ’Security in wireless sensor networks’, Commun ACM, 47, pp 53–57 (2004).
Shi E and Perrig A: ’Designing secure sensor networks’, Wireless Communications, IEEE, 11, pp 38–43 (2004).
Lorincz K, Malan D J, Fulford-Jones T R F, Nawoj A, Clavel A, Shnayder V, Mainland G, Welsh M and Moulton S: ’Sensor networks for emergency response: challenges and opportunities’, Pervasive Computing, IEEE, 3, pp 16–23 (2004).
Waterman J, Curtis D, Goraczko M, Shih E, Sarin P, Pino E, Ohno-Machado L, Greenes R, Guttag J and Stair T: ’Demonstration of SMART (Scalable Medical Alert Response Technology)’, in AMIA 2005 Annual Symposium, Washington DC, American Medical Informatics Association (2005).
Konstantas D, Jones V and Herzog R: ’MobiHealth — Innovative 2.5/3G mobile services and applications for health care’, in IST Mobile and Wireless Telecommunications Summit 2002, Thessaloniki, Greece (2002).
Ng J W P, Lo B P L, Wells O, Sloman M, Toumazou C, Peters N, Darzi A and Yang G Z: ’Ubiquitous Monitoring Environment for Wearable and Implantable Sensors (UbiMon)’, presented at UbiComp, Nottingham (September 2004).
Lo B, Thiemjarus S, King R and Yang G Z: ’Body Sensor Network — A Wireless Sensor Platform for Pervasive Healthcare Monitoring’, presented at 3rd International Conference on Pervasive Computing (PERVASIVE 2005), Munich (May 2005).
’To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System’, Committee on Quality of Health Care in America, Institute of Medicine, Washington, DC, National Academy Press (2000).
Wood A D and Stankovic J A: ’Denial of service in sensor networks’, Computer, 35, pp 54–62 (2002).
Karlof C and Wagner D: ’Secure routing in wireless sensor networks: attacks and countermeasures’, Proc of 1st IEEE Int Workshop on Sensor Network Protocols and Applications, Anchorage, Alaska (2003).
Chris K, Naveen S and David W: ’TinySec: a link layer security architecture for wireless sensor networks’, Proc of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, Baltimore, MD, USA, ACM Press (2004).
Adrian P, Robert S, Tygar J D, Victor W and David E C: ’SPINS: security protocols for sensor networks’, Wireless Network, 8, pp 521–534 (2002).
Donggang L, Peng N and Wenliang D: ’Group-based key pre-distribution in wireless sensor networks’, Proc of the 4th ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, Cologne, Germany, ACM Press (2005).
Wenliang D, Jing D, Yunghsiang S H, Pramod K V, Jonathan K and Aram K: ’A pairwise key predistribution scheme for wireless sensor networks’, ACM Trans Inf Syst Secur, 8, pp 228–258 (2005).
Dutertre B, Cheung S and Levy J: ’Lightweight key management in wireless sensor networks by leveraging initial trust’, Technical Report SRI-SDL-04-02, SRI International (2004).
Deng J, Han R and Mishra S: ’INSENS: Intrusion-tolerant routing for wireless sensor networks’, Computer Communications, 29, pp 216–230 (2006).
Warren S, Lebak J, Yao J, Creekmore J, Milenkovic A and Jovanov E: ’Interoperability and Security in Wireless Body Area Network Infrastructures’, in 27th IEEE Annual Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology, EMBC Shanghai, China (2005).
Naveen S and David W: ’Security considerations for IEEE802.15.4 networks’, Proc of the 2004 ACM Workshop on Wireless Security, Philadelphia, PA, USA, ACM Press (2004).
About this article
Cite this article
Ng, H.S., Sim, M.L. & Tan, C.M. Security issues of wireless sensor networks in healthcare applications. BT Technol J 24, 138–144 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10550-006-0051-8
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10550-006-0051-8