Enhanced Security and Privacy Framework for Electronic Healthcare Systems (EHCS), A Case of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching & Referral Hospital (JOOTRH)

Abstract

As healthcare sector becomes more populated with Technology driven connected IoT medical devices, privacy and security on patients’ data exchanged through these devices is critical, and therefore becomes an issue of concern. Electronic Healthcare Systems’ (EHCS) run very critical applications that manipulate patients’ data to support timely and effective healthcare service delivery. This begins from patient’s admission, history taking, diagnosis, referral management, disease prevention and treatment among others. Many studies have revealed that in most developing countries, the available Electronic Healthcare Systems (EHCS) in modern hospitals and the allied facilities have been mishandled, posing a lot of risks to patients’ lives. This has been happening both internally by novice or rouge system users, and more so externally by organized online criminal gang. Considering worldwide emergence of the high value for healthcare data, and the associated online criminality, patients’ lives remains hanging in a balance with the absence of enhanced security and privacy framework. This could cause very serious healthcare security breaches and vulnerabilities on Electronic Healthcare Systems (EHCS), especially in the distributed clinical environments, where health data MUST be exchanged between the facilities for continued healthcare services. This study adopted both qualitative and quantitative research methods, and uses a descriptive cross sectional study to access and examine the level of security and privacy of patients’ data in EHCS at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital (JOOTRH) and its allied facilities (health services sub contraction level) in Kisumu, Kenya that serves more than five (5) million patients from more than ten (10) counties in the Western Kenya Region. Finally, it identified security and privacy challenges in EHCS, and developed an Enhanced Security and Privacy Framework, which would guarantee quality and secure healthcare service delivery to patients in Healthcare facilities within interoperable environments.