Privacy protection for personal data integration and sharing in care coordination services: A case study on wellness cloud

Abstract

Care coordination services bring together a multitude of providers to deliver continuity of care outside clinical settings. The coordinated services improve wellness management and operational outcomes but pose challenges on privacy when integrating multiple sources of personal health data and providing a data access and sharing mechanism to third party providers. In this paper, we particularly address the privacy challenges associated with data integration and sharing in a multi-tenant cloud environment for healthcare. We present three care coordination use cases and detail the functional requirements across different stages of a personal data service cycle. Additionally, reflecting on technical challenges associated with privacy-preserving data integration and sharing, we introduce a set of common data services to handle these issues, which ultimately lend support to the development of accountable coordinated care services. © 2012 IEEE.