Overview of ICmetrics Technology – Security Infrastructure for Autonomous and Intelligent Healthcare System

Recent developments in bio-, nano-, and digital technology have changed the way modern healthcare systems operate. The provision of healthcare servicing remotely and exploitation of monitoring and assistive technology within and outside medical institutions mean that medical staff and patients constantly interact with various electronic devices. It also means that sensitive patient data are stored on and being transmitted between these devices. To ensure safe and secure use of medical equipment, as well as authorised access to data, appropriate encryption and debugging infrastructure should be integrated into the modern healthcare system. This paper introduces a novel concept, ICmetrics, that can serve as a basis for developing such infrastructure. More specifically, the ICmetric technology is based on the idea of generating encryption keys directly from the characteristics of electronic systems’ behaviour on both hard- and software levels. This may include features extracted from electronic circuits, sensors, machine-machine and machine-human interfaces, as well communication peripherals. While the proposed technology has a number of advantages over the existing security systems, it also poses interesting research challenges. These challenges along with the proposed solutions are discussed in the paper.