Study on Data Confidentiality in Telemedicine Practice

Abstract

The study examines the security threat to the practice of telemedicine and proffers a solution through the integration of the RSA cryptography and the F4 frequency domain steganography. The integration of the two techniques results in computational complexity but the cost of this when compared to that of security of data makes the later worth the while. It is difficult to differentiate the digital image object from the stego image object with the human eyes. One of the limitations seen in the approach is the low carrying capacity due the F4 algorithm employed in the study. F4 uses the Discrete Cosine Transform that limits the information captured by both the patient and the physician. The RSA cipher provides asymmetry key that ensures a better security than the F4 which operates without a key. So the combination of both the F4 and RSA complements each other. While RSA ensures the provision of asymmetry key, the F4 ensures the concealment of the information from an intruder. Medical data are critical data that its concealment from unauthorized recipient is very important. Confidentiality of data is a key component to the practice of telemedicine and its lack has tended to discourage potential patients from such a platform. Once a patient discovers that the confidential information he had provided to a machine has been intruded on by an unknown person he is likely to withdraw his patronage from such a system. Though he could be vexed by the slow speed of processing but this could be tolerated. Further study of embedding the message in a looseless image is however suggested to handle the complexity of processing and improve on the carrying capacity of the stego image.