Security and Privacy of Health Data: A Review of the Challenges and Approaches

Health data is generated on a daily basis amidst privacy and security threats. Because patients feel that their data is highly sensitive, they are not willing to disclose much about their health status. This is because of the privacy and security issues feared by the patients. As a result, patient data collected is left with a lot of missing values, outliers, noise and some inconsistencies. Those who willingly provide their sensitive data are left in suspense about the privacy and security of this data wherever its used. These security concerns are also a big threat to the medical institutions from hindering medical research to huge financial losses. This review focuses on the challenges and approaches to these security and privacy issues. Prevailing medical practices used in addressing these issues have also been discussed.