title: A risk management model for securing virtual healthcare communities.
abstract: Virtual healthcare communities aim to bring together healthcare professionals and patients, improve the quality of healthcare services and assist healthcare professionals and researchers in their everyday activities. In a secure and reliable environment, patients share their medical data with doctors, expect confidentiality and demand reliable medical consultation. Apart from a concrete policy framework, several ethical, legal and technical issues must be considered in order to build a trustful community. This research emphasises on security issues, which can arise inside a virtual healthcare community and relate to the communication and storage of data. It capitalises on a standardised risk management methodology and a prototype architecture for healthcare community portals and justifies a security model that allows the identification, estimation and evaluation of potential security risks for the community. A hypothetical virtual healthcare community is employed in order to portray security risks and the solutions that the security model provides.
authors.affiliation: Hellenic Data Protection Authority, Auditors Department, Ampelokipoi, Greece. achrysanthou@dpa.gr
authors.forename: Anargyros
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chryssanthou
authors.forename: Iraklis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Varlamis
authors.forename: Charikleia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Latsiou
mesh_terms: D017028:Caregivers; D016494:Computer Security; D003219:Confidentiality; D006282:Health Personnel; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006302:Health Services Research; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D020407:Internet; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized / Q000458:organization & administration; D010361:Patients; D012308:Risk Management / Q000458:organization & administration*; D014584:User-Computer Interface