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For centuries, healthcare has been a basic service provided by many governments to their citizens. Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a significant transformation in the quality of healthcare services provided by healthcare organizations and professionals. Recent advances have led to the emergence of Electronic Health (E-health), largely made possible by the massive deployment and adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, cybercriminals and attackers are exploiting vulnerabilities associated primarily with ICTs, causing data breaches of patients’ confidential digital health information records. Here, we review recent security attacks reported for E-healthcare and discuss the solutions proposed to mitigate them. We also identify security challenges that must be addressed by E-health system designers and implementers in the future, to respond to threats that could arise as E-health systems become integrated with technologies such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and smart cities.

In the last few years, many value-added applications (such as Payment services) in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks ( VANETs ) have emerged. Although these applications offer great business opportunities they also introduce new concerns regarding security and privacy. Moreover, the wide range of scenarios (with or without connectivity restrictions) arising from vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communications have opened up new security challenges which must be considered by Payment system designers to achieve the same security capabilities independent of the scenario where Payment occurs. We designed and implemented a lightweight (using symmetric-key operations which requires low computational power) secure Payment protocol for those scenarios in VANETs and other mobile environments where the Merchant cannot communicate directly with the Acquirer (the Merchant’s financial institution) to process the Payment Request . We also present practical performance results that can be achieved with the proposed Payment protocol.

Many mobile payment systems have emerged in the last few years which allow payments for services and goods from mobile devices. However, most of them have been based on a scenario where all the entities are directly connected to each other (formally called the full connectivity scenario) and do not consider those situations where the client cannot directly communicate with the merchant. We present the design and the implementation of an anonymous secure payment protocol based on the payment gateway centric scenario for mobile environments where the client cannot communicate directly with the merchant to process the payment request. Our proposed payment protocol uses symmetric-key operations because of their low computational requirements. We present a performance evaluation of the proposed payment protocol in a real environment. Performance results obtained with the implemented protocol demonstrate that our protocol achieves a small execution time (11.68 s) for a payment transaction using a mobile phone and a restricted scenario which causes only a slight increase in the number of the steps necessary to complete a payment transaction as a result of the lack of direct communication between the client and the merchant.

Vehicular ad hoc networks ( VANETs ) are envisioned to support the development of a wide range of attractive applications such as payment services which require the design of payment systems that satisfy additional requirements associated with VANETs. The wide range of scenarios (with or without connectivity restriction) arising from vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communications have opened up new security challenges which must be considered by payment system designers to achieve the same security capabilities independent of the scenario where payment occurs. We propose and implement a new payment protocol (called KCMS-VAN protocol) for those scenarios where the client cannot communicate directly with the credit card issuer (the client’s financial institution) for authentication. Our proposed protocol uses symmetric-key operations which require low computational power and can be processed much faster than asymmetric ones. We also present a performance evaluation of the proposed payment protocol and the results obtained demonstrate that optimal performance can be achieved with it.

We explored chitosan-based sustained release pastes for apexification. The study aimed to formulate chitosan-based pastes loaded with calcium hydroxide (CH) or with calcium chloride (CC), and to evaluate the sustained release of Ca2+ and pH changes in deionized water as well as the effect of the pastes on cell viability. The pastes were formulated by dissolution of the chitosan in 1% or 2% acetic acid (AAC) plus the addition of CH or CC, then were suspended in deionized water for 50 days; the released Ca(II) and pH were measured with an electrode probe. The effect of the pastes on viability of human dental pulp cells was evaluated with a MTS assay. The results showed that the pastes prepared with 1% and 2% AAC and loaded with CH released a 74.9% and a 76.1% of the Ca2+ content, respectively, while the pastes prepared with 1% and 2% AAC loaded with CC released a content of Ca2+ of 90.8% and 76.6%, respectively. A control paste (CH and polyethylene glycol) released a 95.4%; significant statistical differences were found between the percentage of the experimental pastes and the control. The CH-loaded pastes caused an alkaline pH at the starting of the study, but the pH became neutral at the ending. The pH of the CC-loaded pastes was neutral at the starting and was acid at the ending. The pastes no affected on the cell viability. The chitosan-based pastes showed a suitable sustained release profile and cytocompatibility.

Objective We evaluated the effectiveness of darunavir (DRV) treatment plus an optimized background regimen in 120 HIV-1 treatment-experienced patients. Design Retrospective cohort, multicenter study. Methods Adults >16 years with virological treatment failure starting therapy with a DRV-containing regimen were included. Effectiveness was evaluated as the percentage of patients with an undetectable HIV-1 RNA viral load (<50 and <200 copies/mL) after 48 weeks, and changes in CD4+ cell counts. We evaluated the risk factors associated with treatment failure. Results Of the cohort, 83 % were men with a median age of 45 years (interquartile range, IQR 40–51). They had experienced treatment for a median of 13 years (IQR 9–17) with a median of six previous regimens (IQR 4–7), all using protease inhibitors. After treatment, 82 % (95 % confidence interval, CI 74–88 %) of patients had an HIV-1 RNA viral load <200 copies/mL and 69 % (95 % CI 60–76 %) had <50 copies/mL. The CD4+ cell count increased by 378 cells/μL (IQR 252–559; P  < 0.001 vs. baseline). Risk factors associated with poor outcome were age >40 years [odds ratio, OR 0.15 (95 % CI 0.10–0.78); P  = 0.015], use of raltegravir in the regimen [OR 0.37 (95 % CI 0.10–0.97); P  = 0.046], and baseline CD4+ cell count <200 cells/μL [OR 2.79 (95 % CI 1.11–6.97); P  = 0.028]. Conclusion In this Mexican cohort Darunavir was metabolically safe, well tolerated and achieved high rates of virological suppression in highly treatment-experienced patients infected with HIV-1.