Research Issues of Privacy Access Control Model for Mobile Ad Hoc Healthcare Applications with XACML

Information privacy is usually concerned with the confidentiality of protected health information (PHI) such as electronic medical records (EMR). To meet the needs of highly mobile patients in healthcare scenarios, mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) are being used for storing entire patient histories and physicals, research data collection forms, the physician´s reference desk, current care plans, and drug orders. Thus, the information access control mechanism for mobile ad hoc healthcare applications must be embedded with privacy- enhancing technologies. This paper presents the research issues of developing a privacy access control model for supporting mobile ad hoc healthcare applications. This paper also shows how extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) can protect confidential EMR in such a setting.