Steganography technique to secure patient confidential information using ECG signal

The number of aging population are growing significantly. In accordance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) the patient´s privacy and security is important in the protection of healthcare privacy. Point-Of-care (PoC) is an application used in hospitals widely around the world. The Security Regulations are implemented to provide data integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Therefore, patients ECG signal and other physiological readings such as temperature, blood pressure, glucose reading, position, etc., are collected at homes by using Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) will be transmitted and diagnosed by remote patient monitoring systems. At the same cost that the patient confidentiality is protected against intruders while data traverse in open network and stored in hospital servers. In this project, to fulfill HIPAA act, a Discrete Wavelet Transform based steganography technique has been proposed. DWT technique allow ECG signal to put out of sight the patient confidential data and thus guarantees the patient´s privacy and confidentiality. In addition the following mechanism were incorporated in this project: (1) encryption and decryption for data confidentiality and integrity (2) a three-tier security for data (3) ECG based Steganography to exchange data. A degree of high privacy is guaranteed for patient and simultaneously the Stego ECG remains diagnosable. Our scheme also ensures security, scalability, and efficiency.