Controlled quantum authentication confidential communication protocol for smart healthcare

In the field of smart healthcare, video consultation has become a key way to provide medical services for remote patients. In this process, it is essential to ensure the legal identity of both parties to the communication and to protect patient privacy data from unlawful interception and tampering. Therefore, a controlled quantum authentication confidential communication protocol is proposed by using the entanglement exchange ability and measurement correlation of Bell states. With the assistance of a trusted third party, the protocol first achieves the mutual authentication of the communication parties, so as to prevent malicious users from communicating by pretending to be medical specialists or patients. The trusted party then further assists the communicating parties in generating two implicit shared keys, which they use to encrypt the message and its digest, ensuring that the patient's sensitive data is not intercepted or tampered with. In addition, the quantum sequences are transmitted only once in the channel, reducing the loss and noise effects caused by multiple transmissions. Security analysis shows that the protocol can effectively resist participant attacks and outside attacks. In addition, performance analysis provides computation in terms of qubit efficiency and experimental simulation results of the protocol.