Towards a Hybrid UHF RFID and NFC Platform for the Security of Medical Data from a Point of Care

Bianco, Giulio Maria; Raso, Emanuele; Fiore, Luca De; Riente, Alessia; Barba, Adina Bianca; Bracciale, Lorenzo; Arduini, Fabiana; Loreti, Paola; Marrocco, Gaetano; Occhiuzzi, Cecilia

doi:10.1109/rfid-ta54958.2022.9923987

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Building on the previous considerations, this paper expands the preliminary work presented in [46] and proposes a complete system architecture for PoCs based on radiofrequency identification for the first time. The architecture includes all the components, from the sensors to the data sharing, and seamlessly integrates UHF RFID and NFC in the same platform thanks to a novel web app.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

UHF RFID and NFC Point-of-Care—Architecture, Security, and Implementation

Bianco

Raso

Fiore

et al. 2023

IEEE J. Radio Freq. Identif.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Points-of-care (PoCs) augment healthcare systems by performing care whenever needed and are becoming increasingly crucial for the well-being of the worldwide population. Personalized medicine, chronic illness management, and cost reduction can be achieved thanks to the widespread adoption of PoCs. Significant incentives for PoCs deployment are nowadays given by wearable devices and, in particular, by RFID (RadioFrequency IDentification) and NFC (Near Field Communications), which are rising among the technological cornerstones of the healthcare internet of things (H-IoT). To fully exploit recent technological advancements, this paper proposes a system architecture for RFID-and NFC-based PoCs. The architecture comprises in a unitary framework both interfaces to benefit from their complementary features, and gathered data are shared with medical experts through secure and user-friendly interfaces that implement the Fast Health Interoperability Resource (FHIR) emerging healthcare standard. The selection of the optimal UHF and NFC components is discussed concerning the employable sensing techniques. The secure transmission of sensitive medical data is addressed by developing a user-friendly "PoC App" that is the first web app exploiting attribute-based encryption (ABE). An application example of the system for monitoring the pH and cortisol levels in sweat is implemented and preliminarily tested by a healthy volunteer.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

UHF RFID and NFC Point-of-Care—Architecture, Security, and Implementation

Bianco

Raso

Fiore

et al. 2023

IEEE J. Radio Freq. Identif.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Overall, after a thorough search through the literature (see next Section 2 for more information on existing literature relevant to the present work), no previous research has investigated secure architectures for NFC and RFID medical sensors while both considering the possible vulnerabilities of wireless, electromagnetic links and the usage of a cloud provider other than the medical system. Indeed, the investigation of similar secure architectures has been gaining attention in recent years [16,48,52,53]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on the security of raw medical data collected by sensors and then shared with the physician through such an NFC/RFID system.…”

Section: Novelty Over Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Among the main advantages of the two technologies is the low cost of the single tags, which allows them to be disposable and vastly deployed, especially in the case of battery-less ones. Thus, RFID sensors can become crucial for the delivery of personalised and precision treatments in the near future, allowing for the creation of points of care (PoCs) that can perform sensing and analysis while avoiding carrying samples to any lab [15], eventually combining the NFC and UHF RFID technologies to communicate the data to the doctor and maximising their respective strengths [16]. To enable continuous monitoring, NFC/RFID medical PoCs usually generate a huge amount of sensitive data that must be stored and shared with doctors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privacy-Aware Architectures for NFC and RFID Sensors in Healthcare Applications

Raso

Bianco

Bracciale

et al. 2022

Sensors

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

World population and life expectancy have increased steadily in recent years, raising issues regarding access to medical treatments and related expenses. Through last-generation medical sensors, NFC (Near Field Communication) and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies can enable healthcare internet of things (H-IoT) systems to improve the quality of care while reducing costs. Moreover, the adoption of point-of-care (PoC) testing, performed whenever care is needed to return prompt feedback to the patient, can generate great synergy with NFC/RFID H-IoT systems. However, medical data are extremely sensitive and require careful management and storage to protect patients from malicious actors, so secure system architectures must be conceived for real scenarios. Existing studies do not analyze the security of raw data from the radiofrequency link to cloud-based sharing. Therefore, two novel cloud-based system architectures for data collected from NFC/RFID medical sensors are proposed in this paper. Privacy during data collection is ensured using a set of classical countermeasures selected based on the scientific literature. Then, data can be shared with the medical team using one of two architectures: in the first one, the medical system manages all data accesses, whereas in the second one, the patient defines the access policies. Comprehensive analysis of the H-IoT system can be useful for fostering research on the security of wearable wireless sensors. Moreover, the proposed architectures can be implemented for deploying and testing NFC/RFID-based healthcare applications, such as, for instance, domestic PoCs.

show abstract