Secure Transmission of IoT mHealth Patient Monitoring Data from Remote Areas Using DTN

Abstract

In remote rural areas without continuous Internet connectivity, it is hard to envisage the use of mHealth applications for remote patient monitoring. In such areas, patients need to travel long distances to reach the nearest health center. In this article, we propose an approach that solves this problem by transmitting mHealth monitoring data, collected using IoT sensors, using DTN. Thus, buses or other vehicles acting as data mules transmit the mHealth data from remote rural areas to a medical center or hospital in the nearest urban area. The proposed approach includes methods to preserve the security of the data through encryption and secure key exchange, and to authenticate the patients through appropriate hashing of selected information. It allows preserving the privacy of the patients, and it takes into account the intermittent nature of the network by adding redundancy to avoid data loss. © 1986-2012 IEEE.