Heartbeat can be used as password to access health records: Study

A patient's own heartbeat might soon be used as the password to access electronic health records, say scientists who developed a low-cost technique to protect personal data. ''The cost and complexity of traditional encryption solutions prevent them being directly applied to telemedicine or mobile healthcare,'' said Zhanpeng Jin, assistant professor at Binghamton University in the US, PTI reported.

''Those systems are gradually replacing clinic-centered healthcare, and we wanted to find a unique solution to protect sensitive personal health data with something simple, available and cost-effective,'' Jin said.

Traditional security measures such as encryption and cryptography are known to be expensive, time-consuming, and computing-intensive.

Patient data was encrypted using a person's unique electrocardiograph (ECG), a measurement of the electrical activity of the heart measured by a biosensor attached to the skin – as the key to lock and unlock the files.''

The ECG signal is one of the most important and common physiological parameters collected and analyzed to understand a patient's' health,'' said Jin.

''While ECG signals are collected for clinical diagnosis and transmitted through networks to electronic health records, we strategically reused the ECG signals for the data encryption. Through this strategy, the security and privacy can be enhanced while minimum cost will be added,'' he said.

According to Jin, the method would help keep the records secure and private.

Jin, a coauthor, along with other researchers from State University of New York (SUNY) Binghamton, on a paper about the new strategy, had also researched the use of a person's ''brainprint'' as a way to access things like buildings and computers, according to the university.