More than 27 million electronic healthcare records were compromised last year.
Now, researchers believe they have found a more efficient method that ensures these credentials stay protected – the patient's own heartbeat.
The team encrypted patient data using the person's unique as the key to lock and unlock the fi electrocardiographes.
FACTS ABOUT ECG
An ECG, or electrocardiograph, records the electrical activity of the heart.
It can reveal any problems with the heart's rhythm or beat.

Though it does not provide a complete picture of the heart's condition, an ECG offers background information on various types of heart disease. 

It can provide clues in cases of:

• Chest pain, fainting, difficulty in breathing or palpitations

• Narrowing of the arteries. This is done with an ECG before and after exercise (an exercise stress test)

• Measuring a person's risk of heart attack.

• Monitoring the effectiveness of any coronary drugs.

• A slow or fast heart beat.

The test is painless and takes about a minute.

 Up to 12 electrodes are attached to arms, legs and chest. Electrical activity is measured and appears on a paper printout. 
The new method was devised by researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

'The cost and complexity of traditional encryption solutions prevent them being directly applied to telemedicine or mobile healthcare,' said Zhanpeng Jin, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Binghamton University.

'Those systems are gradually replacing clinic-centered healthcare, and we wanted to find a unique solution to protect sensitive personal health data with something simple, available and cost-effective.'

Currently, the only methods to keep hackers from getting a hold of electronic health records are cryptography or encryption, but both can be expensive, time-consuming and computing intense.

But Jin and his colleagues were able to encrypt a person's health data using their on electrocardiograph (ECG)--a measurement of the electrical activity of the heart measured by a biosensor attached to the skin and transforming it into a key for the files.

'The ECG signal is one of the most important and common physiological parameters collected and analyzed to understand a patient's' health,' said Jin.

'While ECG signals are collected for clinical diagnosis and transmitted through networks to electronic health records, we strategically reused the ECG signals for the data encryption