Security analysis of emerging remote obstetrics monitoring systems

Remote obstetrics care monitoring is currently being used in many different countries to improve the quality of prenatal care, with promising results. The next generation of remote monitoring systems take advantage of improvements in wireless communications and mobile phone technologies to incorporate off-the-shelf equipment, such as Android smartphones, into their design. This not only reduces the overall cost, but also allows for greater flexibility, since the patient can perform monitoring in the comfort of their home. However, our analysis suggests that recently proposed systems have inadequate security protections needed to meet HIPAA requirements for health data. We also proposed recommendations to improve the security of these emerging systems.