Post-quantum cryptography for healthcare: securing medical data, connected devices, and digital health infrastructure

Healthcare systems increasingly depend on interoperable electronic health records, picture archiving and communication systems, cloud analytics, remote monitoring, and connected medical devices. These workflows create a long-lived confidentiality problem: clinical, genomic, pediatric, psychiatric, and family-linked data may remain sensitive for decades, whereas the public-key algorithms that protect current transport and identity systems are vulnerable to future cryptographically relevant quantum computers. Shor's algorithm threatens RSA, finite-field Diffie-Hellman, elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman, and elliptic-curve signatures, while Grover's algorithm reduces the effective security margin of symmetric primitives. This review validates the post-quantum transition pathway for healthcare and distinguishes software-deployable post-quantum cryptography from hardware-specialized quantum key distribution. We summarize the standardized NIST primitives, correct the status of Falcon/FN-DSA as a FIPS 206 algorithm still in development, analyze deployment constraints in Internet of Medical Things environments, and map cryptographic migration to healthcare governance. A staged, hybrid, crypto-agile migration strategy is recommended: prioritize long-confidentiality data, inventory cryptographic dependencies, deploy hybrid key establishment at enterprise gateways, reserve QKD for selected high-value fixed links, and require vendor update pathways for clinical devices.