Development and Application of Data Privacy Protection in Healthcare

Dear Colleagues,

Implementing advanced data security measures is indispensable in various industries, among which healthcare occupies a major position because it utilizes highly sensitive patient information. With the popularization of smart and digital medical devices, such data is being collected in an exponentially accelerated manner. Among others, patient-related data in the healthcare setting includes clinical information, medical images, genetic data, behavior records, social information, etc. Protecting this kind of data is important in treatment as well as research contexts. In the former case, trust is secured and even increased, allowing an increase in the range of data types patients are willing to provide for efficient treatment. In the latter case, secondary data analysis is facilitated, which allows the furthering of knowledge without costly clinical studies and the creation of new, personalized services.

There have been significant developments in data privacy protection in healthcare in recent years. 1) Encryption and secure storage: healthcare organizations now employ robust encryption techniques to protect patient data, both during transmission and storage. 2) Access control and user authentication: strict access controls are implemented to ensure that only authorized individuals can access patient data. 3) Audit trails and monitoring: healthcare systems employ monitoring tools and audit trails to track access to patient data. 4) Anonymization: in order to mitigate the legal and ethical risks of sharing sensitive information for secondary data usage scenarios, de-identification of patient records is commonly used and is now related to sophisticated notions such as differential privacy. Despite these measures, the healthcare system remains an important target for cyber attackers, with hospitals in several countries hacked, resulting in a large amount of information being leaked. Faced with such risks, data privacy and security protection have to be adapted to match the improved attacker resources.

This Special Issue aims to promote advanced technologies and applications of data privacy protection schemes in healthcare systems. We welcome high-quality submissions that demonstrate insights and experiences on healthcare data protection in this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Murat Sariyar
Prof. Dr. Matthias Templ
Guest Editors

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• data protection in healthcare
• cryptography in healthcare
• data privacy protection
• data leakage
• big data