The Secure Data Transfer in E-Healthcare Systems Using Steganography and Cryptographic Techniques

Compared to traditional methods, the Internet infrastructure has undergone enormous advancements. The internet is a strategy for building a world in which all objects, people, and services are linked to one another and capable of interacting and working together to aid in the gathering, storing, exchanging, and monitoring of data. Therefore, extra care and protection are needed for extremely confidential patient health information. The availability and affordability of the Internet have created the rise of a healthcare trend known as e-healthcare. The steganographic algorithm LSB is used to encrypt patient health information/prescription which is embedded in a digital host before begin sent to the network, thus their existence is uncertain in nature. In addition to adding an extra layer of security, the cryptographic algorithm MD5 Hash function enables the validation process from the stego image to decrypt the patient's health information/prescription and MRI images. In the case of text data, the base 64 encoding algorithm will be used to encode and store text data in the database. Two things will be checked, the image will be decrypted, if there is an MRI in the database and else the data will be unlocked if not. After verification, the health information and prescription for the patient will be recovered. Future research will expand this to include a variety of applications, including one-time password security, mobile apps, cloud implementation, multiple access, and online appointment integrations.