Security issues to tele-medicine system design

With the rapid development of the Internet and Internet based applications, tele-medicine can potentially provide important health care coverage for remote and rural areas where specialized medical expertise is lacking. Using Internet based tele-medicine application, the records and vital signs of patients in remote or rural areas can be made available to medical experts in major medical centers for real-time evaluation or diagnosis. However, since the Internet is an open system with many potential security holes, special consideration and care must be taken to ensure the safety of patient and medical data. This paper addresses the security related issues for Internet based tele-medicine systems in two aspects: (1) medical data protection needs; and (2) system design issues.