RFID Privacy Issues in Healthcare: Exploring the Roles of Technologies and Regulations

AbstractWith the deployment and use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in the healthcare domain, there are increasing privacy concerns regarding the technical designs of RFID systems vis-a-vis the requirements of the healthcare regulations. This paper reviews and analyzes the impact of privacy issues in the RFID adoption in the healthcare domain, and presents a conceptual framework for analyzing the relationship between technology and regulations in light of the Fair Information Practice (FIP) principles to ensure patients’ privacy. Our conceptual framework uses the FIP principles as a guideline to examine the design of Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) and analyze existing regulations to assess the compliance issues. The conceptual analyses show that current PETs fail to incorporate the FIP principles and thus organizations in the healthcare sector face complex challenges to comply with security and privacy standards and regulations. Using the groundwork laid down in this study, futu...