Security recommendations for implementation in distributed healthcare systems

Healthcare applications involve complex structures of interacting processes and professionals that need to exchange information to provide the care services. In this kind of systems many different professional competencies, ethical and sensibility requirements as well a legal frameworks coexist and because of that the information managed inside the system should not be freely accessed, on the contrary it must be subject to very complex privacy restrictions. This is particularly critical in distributed systems, where additionally, security in remote transmissions must be ensured. In the paper we address the fundamental security issues that must be considered in design of a distributed healthcare application. The particular case of the K4CARE system is presented as an example of an application to the medical domain of homecare assistance. Homecare involves professionals from different institutions (hospital, social work organisms, etc) structurally independent, which must interact around any particular patient, and which use to be located in different physical places having their own and independent information systems.