Cryptographically Supported NFC Tags in Medication for Better Inpatient Safety


Özcanhan M. H., Dalkılıç G., Utku S.

JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SYSTEMS, cilt.38, sa.8, 2014 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 38 Sayı: 8
  • Basım Tarihi: 2014
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10916-014-0061-x
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SYSTEMS
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Inpatientmedication, Ubiquitous systems, RFID, NFC, Authentication, PATIENT SAFETY, ERRORS
  • Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Reliable sources report that errors in drug administration are increasing the number of harmed or killed inpatients, during healthcare. This development is in contradiction to patient safety norms. A correctly designed hospital-wide ubiquitous system, using advanced inpatient identification and matching techniques, should provide correct medicine and dosage at the right time. Researchers are still making grouping proof protocol proposals based on the EPC Global Class 1 Generation 2 ver. 1.2 standard tags, for drug administration. Analyses show that such protocols make medication unsecure and hence fail to guarantee inpatient safety. Thus, the original goal of patient safety still remains. In this paper, a very recent proposal (EKATE) upgraded by a cryptographic function is shown to fall short of expectations. Then, an alternative proposal IMS-NFC which uses a more suitable and newer technology; namely Near Field Communication (NFC), is described. The proposed protocol has the additional support of stronger security primitives and it is compliant to ISO communication and security standards. Unlike previous works, the proposal is a complete ubiquitous system that guarantees full patient safety; and it is based on off-the-shelf, new technology products available in every corner of the world. To prove the claims the performance, cost, security and scope of IMS-NFC are compared with previous proposals. Evaluation shows that the proposed system has stronger security, increased patient safety and equal efficiency, at little extra cost.