Electrotextile-integrated Medical Data Security System

Data protection/cybersecurity is an urgent concern touching all industries, governments, and private citizens. Attacks, ranging from an individual actor with self-serving purposes to state-sponsored campaigns, are experienced across modalities and by most every system. Efforts to thwart these attacks are focused both on maintaining data/system integrity (i.e. prevention of perversion or loss) and providing security (i.e. preventing the theft of information so that it might be used for unintended purposes). Both aspects are pertinent to military medicine/healthcare IT, as ensuring data is securely stored so that it can be used during the stages of care is vital for the health of both the individual and the force. Key concerns include medical record integrity, patient information management, and medical sensor integrity. High priority military and industrial systems are often protected using hardware and software encryption solutions. The Defense Health Agency (DHA) has identified a need to leverage encryption solutions to provide technical non-repudiation of combat-related records generated at the time of medically-relevant event. In this Phase I SBIR program, Mantel Technologies proposes the development of an e-textile compatible medical data security system that can be integrated without loss of core textile system function or deviation from defining functional specifications.