Mitigating vulnerabilities and threats for patient-centric healthcare systems in low income developing countries

The global trend to adopt a patient-centric approach in the delivery of healthcare services has enabled the ubiquitous access of health information by both health providers and consumers. This has consequently accelerated the distribution of healthcare systems worldwide. However, this has also increased the complexity of the management of healthcare systems. One of the major challenges is that these systems need to be readily available at the same time they should protect health information from an unauthorized access. This becomes even more difficult in resource-constrained settings specifically in low-income countries. Unfortunately, there is little literature that comprehensively endeavours to explain how to mitigate threats and vulnerabilities that are encountered in a patient-centric system especially in a limited resource environment. The aim of this paper is therefore to discuss how vulnerabilities and threats can be mitigated in managing the security of health information in a patient-centric context specifically in a resource-constrained setting such as low-income countries. The holistic approach therein focuses on providing customised solutions to the vulnerabilities and threats to meet the local needs of patient-centric systems in low-income countries.