Researchers at
Binghamton State University in New York think your heart could be the key to
your personal data. By measuring the electrical activity of the heart,
researchers say.
they can encrypt
patients' health records.
The fundamental idea
is this: In the future, all patients will be outfitted with a wearable device,
which will continuously collect physiological data and transmit it to the
patients' doctors. Because electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are already
collected for clinical diagnosis, the system would simply reuse the data during
transmission, thus reducing the cost and computational power needed to create
an encryption key from scratch.
“There have been so
many mature encryption techniques available, but the problem is that those
encryption techniques rely on some complicated arithmetic calculations and
random key generations," said Zhanpeng Jin, a co-author of the paper "A
Robust and Reusable ECGbased Authentication and Data Encryption Scheme for
eHealth Systems."
Those encryption
techniques can't be "directly applied on the energy-hungry mobile and wearable
devices," Jin added. "If you apply those kinds of encryptions on top
of the mobile device, then you can burn the battery very quickly."
But there are
drawbacks. According to Jin, one of the reasons ECG encryption has not been widely
adopted is because it's generally more sensitive and vulnerable to variations
than some other biometric measures. For instance, your electrical activity
could change depending on factors such as physical exertion and mental state.
Other more permanent factors such as age and health can also have an effect.
“ECG
itself cannot be used for a biometric authentication purpose alone, but it’s a
very effective way as a secondary authentication,” Jin said.
While
the technology for ECG encryption is already here, its adoption will depend on patients' willingness
to don wearables and on their comfort with constantly sharing their biometrics.
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