Web Services Security Issues in Healthcare Applications

Many research efforts are in progress for developing unified standards for Electronic Health Records. Such records can be shared for provisions of health care and research. Significant benefits can be realized when the proposed systems are used widely. Additional security requirements are crucial for their wide adoption. Patients want privacy and confidentiality. These systems will be deployed in distributed databases that are available to users through web services. This study examines security challenges in unified health care applications. It examines how database security systems try to overcome these challenges. These standards will be delivered through web services. We examine available web service security standards, threats for web services and available ways to overcome the threats.