A Global Medical Data Security and Privacy Preserving Standards Identification Framework for Electronic Healthcare Consumers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework to standardize global security and privacy rules for electronic health records, utilizing clustering and decision-making methods to guide implementation.

Contribution

It presents a novel, integrated framework combining literature review, concept clustering, and prioritization techniques for EHR security and privacy standards.

Findings

Identified 20 key concepts from existing standards.

Categorized concepts into 5 key factors using K-means clustering.

Determined preferred implementation strategies via Ordinal Priority Approach.

Abstract

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are crucial for the success of digital healthcare, with a focus on putting consumers at the center of this transformation. However, the digitalization of healthcare records brings along security and privacy risks for personal data. The major concern is that different countries have varying standards for the security and privacy of medical data. This paper proposed a novel and comprehensive framework to standardize these rules globally, bringing them together on a common platform. To support this proposal, the study reviews existing literature to understand the research interest in this issue. It also examines six key laws and standards related to security and privacy, identifying twenty concepts. The proposed framework utilized K-means clustering to categorize these concepts and identify five key factors. Finally, an Ordinal Priority Approach is applied to determine the preferred implementation of these factors in the context of EHRs. The proposed study provides a descriptive then prescriptive framework for the implementation of privacy and security in the context of electronic health records. Therefore, the findings of the proposed framework are useful for professionals and policymakers in improving the security and privacy associated with EHRs.