Accessing sensitive patient information in ubiquitous healthcare systems

The move towards Ubiquitous healthcare(U-Healthcare) systems is influenced by the growth in healthcare spending fuelled by an ageing population and an increase in the rate of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and chronic heart and lung diseases. The adoption and use of these systems is expected to enable healthcare professionals to remotely perform real-time monitoring, early diagnosis and treatment to patient for potential risky diseases and hence prevent terminal situation. To achieve the aforementioned benefits, private and sensitive patient information is acquired using sensors and other devices. Contrary to other information systems where a patient can decide which information is collected, with U-Healthcare systems, patient has no obligation on that, hence increasing the need for both technical and non-technical measures to control access in these systems in order to maintain patients' privacy. In this extended abstract we consider the need for privacy when accessing sensitive patient information by discussing different access control models developed for U-Healthcare systems.