Secure Mobile Data Collection Systems

Main content

This research is a collaborative project at the University of Bergen between Department of Informatics, Centre for International Health and the openXdata community.

The research project focuses on security aspects of Mobile Data Collection Systems (MDCS), which are specialized mHealth systems that use mobile devices to collect data relating to health issues, generally by filling out forms on a mobile device.

The usage of handheld devices in the context of health is an emerging part of eHealth. In 2010 the American National Institutes of Health defined mHealth as "The delivery of healthcare services via mobile communication devices". While the idea of using mobile devices as part of healthcare is not new, a recent increase in the mobile phone penetration rate in low-income countries makes mHealth a cost-effective way of providing better healthcare in areas of the world where health services are lacking.

Even though there are a number of MDCS in use today, most of them fail to systematically address the security and privacy concerns while handling private or personal information such as medical records. As sensitive information is stored, exchanged and processed in these systems, issues like privacy, confidentiality, integrity, availability and authentication must be given high priority. In this research, we analyze the challenges in securing Mobile Data Collection Systems deployed in remote areas and in low-budget settings, and develop a secure solution which is compliant with regulatory security and privacy requirements. We use openXdata as our canonical reference for a Mobile Data Collection System.

OpenXdata is open source mobile data collection system which has been primarily used in health related projects in low-and-middle income countries.

Researchers

Associate Prof. Khalid A. Mughal

Adjunct Prof. Federico Mancini

Samson Gejibo (PhD Candidate)

Jørn Klungsøyr (PhD Candidate)

Remi André B. Valvik (Master Student)

Publications

1. S. H. Gejibo, F. Mancini, K. A. Mughal, R. A. B. Valvik, J. I. Klungsyr, Secure Data Storage for Mobile Data Collection Systems, Proceedings of International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES), October, 2012, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Published by ACM and indexed by ACM Digital Library and DBLP. Download

2. S. H. Gejibo, F. Mancini, K. A. Mughal, R. A. B. Valvik, J. I. Klungsyr, Secure Data Storage for Java ME-Based Mobile Data Collection Systems, Proceedings of 14th IEEE International Conference on e-Health Networking Applications and Services, Healthcom2012, October 2012 , Beijing, China. Download

3. S. H. Gejibo, F. Mancini, K. A. Mughal, J. I. Klungsyr, R. A. B. Valvik, Challenges in Implementing End-to-End Secure Protocol for Java ME-Based Mobile Data Collection in Low-Budget Settings, Proceedings of International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems, February, 2012, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Springer, ISBN 978-3-642-28165-5, p. 38-45. Download

4. F. Mancini, S. H. Gejibo, K. A. Mughal, J. I. Klungsyr, Adding Security to Mobile Data Collection, Proceedings of 13th IEEE International Conference on e-Health Networking Applications and Services, Healthcom2011, June 2011 , Columbia, MO, USA, E-ISBN: 978-1-61284-696-5, p. 86-89 Download

5. F. Mancini, S. H. Gejibo, K. A. Mughal, R. A. B. Valvik, and J. I. Klungsyr, Secure Mobile Data Collection Systems for Low-Budget Settings, Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2012), August 2012 , Prague, Czech Republic, ISBN: 978-0-7695-4775-6, p. 196-205 Download

6. Remi André B. Valvik, Security API for Java ME: secureXdata, Master Thesis, Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. Download

7. Daniele Grasso, Authentication and secure data storage in cloud based mobile data collection, Master Thesis, Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway. Download