African Journal of Medicine and Surgery

ISSN 2756-3324

African Journal of Medicine and Surgery ISSN 2756-3324 Vol. 7 (11), pp. 001-016, November, 2020. © International Scholars Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Securing electronic medical records transmissions over unsecured communications: An overview for better medical governance

Hamdan O. Alanazi1,4, Hamid A. Jalab1, Gazi Mahabubul Alam3*, B. B. Zaidan2 and A. A. Zaidan2

1Department of Computer System and Technology, Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

2Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.

3Department of Educational Management, Planning and Policy, Faculty of Education, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

4Faculty of Applied Medical Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Accepted 07 July, 2020

Abstract

Nowadays, health care is one of the most important subjects in life. In USA, 100 billion dollars will be spent on it in the next 10 years, according to experts. The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is usually a computerized legal medical record created in an organization that delivers care, such as hospital and doctors’ surgery. In the age of technology, one of the most important factors for EMR is that it secures the records for the patients, protects their rights and is responsible for the disclosure of their data. An overview of this study has presented the importance of the privacy of the EMR and the patients’ rights. In addition, cryptography algorithms and security requirements have been discussed and the paper has also discussed different architecture, designs and systems that have been reported in the literature. In a nutshell, most of these systems are poor in terms of achieving the security requirements, while on the other side, most of the systems have not discussed the patients’ rights and how the system can detect the persons who broadcast these records.

Key words: Electronic medical record, information security, data privacy, rights of patient and cryptography algorithms.