Access Control Model for E-Health in a Cloud-Based Environment for HIV Patients in South Africa

Information about the rampant nature of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Africa, particularly South Africa is no more a news. There is a global awareness on this. In spite of the ubiquitous nature of this ailment, patients feel highly uncomfortable with the way and manner their sensitive and classified health information are being accessed and shared by different healthcare practitioners. HIV patients opined that information about them are vulnerable that people are using it against them. Although, the traditional security mechanisms have been adopted over the years to protect health data and patient information, researches have however shown that some of these approaches are suffering from several challenges such as platform dependency, isolation, cumbersomeness as well as inflexibility. Against these backdrops, this research aims at building a cloud-based access control model for sharing information across nine (9) provinces (The Eastern Cape, The Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, The Northern Cape, North West) in the Republic of South Africa among medical experts to ensure safety, security, reliability, dependability as well as flexile information sharing framework. This work is based on the adoption and usage of Role Based Access Control (RBAC) model, Access Control List (ACL) model and Motive Based Access Control (MBAC) model in a cloud-based environment. The implementation of the proposed framework will undoubtedly provide a unique and novel approach for achieving its primary aim and objectives.