Security for Healthcare Internet of Things

Healthcare Internet of Things (IoT) technology is ushering a new era in medical care and wellness, with remote patient monitoring, improved patient care, reduced costs, and enhanced health outcomes in both acute care and chronic disease management. A Healthcare IoT system comprises of a network of smart devices such as wearables, sensors and medical monitors interconnected using wireless technologies. While the technology promises enormous benefits in patient care, it also brings new risks as many of these connected devices are unprotected. Cyber-attacks on such systems, ranging from eavesdropping, message tampering to denial of service, can not only impact patients' privacy but also can have catastrophic consequences on patient care itself. Therefore, security for Healthcare IoT stands out as a critical research area before it can be successfully deployed and widely adopted. The primary objective of this proposal is to investigate vulnerabilities, security threats and intrusions on Healthcare IoT systems, and design intrusion detection and prevention mechanisms to mitigate cyber-attacks on such systems. The project will explore an integration of machine learning approaches with biometric parameters to ensure confidentiality, integrity and authentication of healthcare data, and experimentally validate these mechanisms on a Healthcare IoT test bench. This Catalyst grant will be used as a tool to initiate and explore long-term collaboration between the Principal Investigator's MYTech (EMerging WIreless Technologies) Lab at Dalhousie University and the collaborator's Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Ropar, India. The major benefits of this proposal will be knowledge mobilization and knowledge transfer by addressing the research gap in healthcare security and training valuable HQP in this area. This will be of importance to Canadian federal and regional health authorities such as Health Canada, Nova Scotia Health, and Public Health Agency of Canada.