Hospital Asset Management By MAC Address-Based "Terminal Connected Status" Detection On Private Network

Abstract

Enhancement of computer technology enables the medical field to include networked electronic medical record system. Also, progress in evidence-based medicine reveals the demands of Internet connection service for medics who cite online records for strategic diagnosis and therapy. Advanced medical information system is needed to connect the whole region network of hospitals is necessary. Therefore, conventional private network system must arm with several kinds of unauthorized access protection. Especially, a reasonable solution against the access from Internet to internal is desired. This paper proposes a method that provides an effective prevention of unauthorized access which is also easy to install and manage. Additionally, the system supports asset management by detecting the status of a connected terminal. The proposed method provides the attack detection of the terminal by collaboration of MAC address access control list with the ARP log of layer-3 switching routers. The proposed method presents the exact location of the detected terminals. The developed system was installed on medical information network of Kyoto University Hospital (KUHP). As a result of real operation, the system proved its effectiveness as easy to install, low maintenance cost, and asset management without sacrificing confidentiality, integrity, and accessibility. Every suspicious access was notified by e-mail to make rapid corrective action such as the physical exclusion. The required functions were confirmed by the unauthorized access experiment. Besides these features, the disconnection experiment that detected a registered terminal removal confirmed the function of lost terminal detection service which is inevitable for hospital asset management.
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