Implementation of Elliptic-Curve Cryptography on Mobile Healthcare Devices

Over the past few years, much research attention has been afforded to the application of remote patient monitoring using embedded mobile devices. However, relatively little research has been done to investigate the security aspects of such scenarios. The present work describes the implementation of a cryptographic algorithm based on elliptic curves on an embedded mobile device useful for healthcare purposes. A personal digital assistant (PDA) has been chosen to be the hardware platform for the implementation as it is particularly suitable for remote patient monitoring applications. The motivation for this paper was to formulate a secure protocol which comprises of signature, encryption and authentication (SEA) as a combined ingredient of secure remote patient monitoring application using mobile devices. This needed to be easy to use and computationally efficient in order to be acceptable to both clinicians and patients and the results indicate a positive outcome.