Security Engineering of Patient-Centered Health Care Information Systems in Peer-to-Peer Environments: Systematic...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Computer Science
• Network Security

Background:

• Patient-centered health care information systems (PHSs) empower patients with health knowledge and control.
• Emerging PHSs utilize centralized, peer-to-peer (P2P), or distributed ledger technologies.
• P2P technology offers flexibility, scalability, and resilience for PHSs, but raises significant self-managed security concerns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify inherent security issues in PHS deployment on P2P networks.
• To explore methods for overcoming identified security challenges.
• To review P2P architectures and propose a suitable model for P2P PHSs.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines.
• Thematic analysis of data from major scientific databases (IEEE, PubMed, Science Direct, ACM, Scopus, Semantic Scholar).
• Searched for articles published between 2008 and 2020, using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System for security issue assessment.

Main Results:

• Identified 8 key security issues and 7 promoting factors for PHS implementation on P2P networks.
• Proposed a suitable P2P architecture for PHS deployment.
• Developed guidelines for secure PHS provision on P2P networks.

Conclusions:

• P2P PHSs present significant security risks due to the lack of centralized control.
• Addressing identified security vulnerabilities is essential to enhance patient trust and adoption of P2P PHSs.
• Ensuring information security is paramount for the successful utilization of P2P-based health systems.