Context-aware Access Control in Pervasive Healthcare

Abstract

Progress in mobile devices, wireless networks and context-aware is bringing pervasive healthcare into reality. In the comfort of their own homes, with the help of wireless PDAs and portable computers, people may enjoy high quality care from a well-orchestrated team of healthcare professionals. The technical challenges include context-awareness, access authorization, privacy, and mobility. This paper presents a rule-based approach to context-aware access control in pervasive healthcare. This system is designed to work on resource-limited mobile devices over a peer-to-peer wireless network. Dynamic access authorization is achieved on the mobile device in real time by actively collecting context information, integrating the appropriate access control rules, and performing logical inference. Performance evaluations of the prototype implementation show the efficiency of the proposed access authorization.