Legal framework for health cloud: A systematic review

Int J Med Inform. 2019 Dec:132:103953. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.103953. Epub 2019 Aug 31.

Abstract

Background: The complicated nature of cloud computing encompassing internet-based technologies and service models for delivering IT applications, processing capability, storage, and memory space brings along challenging problems. Some issues such as information security, privacy, and legal aspects of cloud computing may become challenging while cross passing with another complex domain like healthcare.

Objectives: The present study was conducted to report the results of a systematic literature review on the legal aspects of health cloud.

Method: The original English papers published in Pub Med, Scopus, Web of Science, and IEEE Digital Library databases were extracted, among which1582 were related to the legal aspects of health cloud environment and were selected using predefined search strings.

Conclusion: Through the review process, effective factors in relation to a health cloud legal framework were identified and accordingly, a proper design was developed for this domain. Next, the identified factors were confirmed and adjusted by mapping the contents of the selected papers to different categories and subcategories under the proposed framework. Five Main categories like the issues related to the compliance, data protection, Identity Credential Access Management (ICAM), ownership, and quality of service were selected as the basic pillars in the proposed framework. Finally, 22 papers were selected, among which 19 were mapped to the compliance issues, 18 the issues related to "Data protection" were addressed, and 14 "Identity Credential Access Management (ICAM)" was discussed. Fifteen Papers were mapped to "Data ownership" and "Quality of service" categories. Some papers were found to present some solutions in all the mentioned areas; however, most of them have addressed only a few issues.

Keywords: Cloud computing; Healthcare; Legal framework; Privacy; Security.

Publication types

  • Systematic Review

MeSH terms

  • Cloud Computing / legislation & jurisprudence*
  • Computer Security / standards*
  • Confidentiality*
  • Databases, Factual
  • Delivery of Health Care
  • Humans
  • Information Storage and Retrieval / legislation & jurisprudence*
  • Privacy*