Interconnecting Autonomous Medical Domains

In this article we discuss the technological challenges from a security and interoperability perspective toward enabling the interconnection of different medical domains. The emergence of networked infrastructures and electronic health records (EHRs) has brought new challenges in the field of medical informatics. Healthcare information needs to be accessible by authorized users only, while its fundamental security properties (namely, integrity, availability, and confidentiality) must be retained. It is concluded that international efforts are needed to enable the creation of a widely accepted EHR that will be able to be used between different countries to provide better health services and therefore improve the care of their traveling citizens.