A survey and taxonomy of the authentication schemes in Telecare Medicine Information Systems

A Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS) enables doctors and physicians at a medical center to provide remote care via Internet to the registered patients at any place. Considering the privacy of the patients, medical data, secure and authenticated access to the medical data located at the medical severs are required. Recently, numerous states of the art authentication schemes are proposed in the literature to increase security of the Telecare Medical Information System (TMIS). This paper presents a comprehensive survey and taxonomy of these authentication schemes and classifies them based on the authentication methods applied in each scheme. In addition, a complete list of security attacks which can be conducted against the authentication schemes in the TMIS is provided, and the security capabilities of each scheme and their vulnerability to these attacks are discussed. Furthermore, the proposed authentication schemes are compared, and their advantages, properties and limitations are highlighted. Finally, the concluding remarks and open research issues in TMIS authentication schemes are provided.