Authors: Madhusudan Rao Karri
Abstract: The rapid adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), cloud computing, mobile health applications, and Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices has transformed the way patient information is collected, stored, exchanged, and analyzed. However, the increasing connectivity of healthcare systems has also introduced significant security and privacy risks. Patient data require protection against unauthorized access, disclosure, modification, loss, and misuse while remaining continuously available to authorized healthcare professionals. This article examines intelligent security architectures for protecting patient data by integrating encryption, authentication, access control, privacy preservation, secure interoperability, blockchain, decentralized storage, and intelligent security analytics. Existing studies demonstrate an evolution from centralized EHR protection toward distributed and patient-centric architectures. A layered architecture is proposed that combines data acquisition, identity and access management, cryptographic protection, secure storage and exchange, distributed trust, and intelligent monitoring. The article examines EHR security, cloud-based healthcare, attribute-based encryption, blockchain, and IoMT security. The article concludes that no single security technology can adequately protect modern patient information; instead, interoperable and adaptive security layers are required to provide confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy, accountability, and patient control.
