Secure Hybrid Communications for Medical Applications

We explore the use of a hybrid and networked system for medical applications. In particular we are interested in monitoring the physiological data of newborn babies. The key element in our design is the use of cell phones as aggregating devices for the sensor collected information. Cell phones in particular enable secure communications with medical wireless sensors. We discuss a key distribution scheme among mobile cell phones and stationary networks of medical sensors. Our goal is to isolate and limit the security damages when nodes of a given sensor network are compromised. We show with simulation results the offered tradeoffs among security, connectivity and node memory.