Patient health records(PHRs) are crucial and
sensitive as they contain essential information and are frequently
shared among healthcare entities. This information must remain
correct, up to date, private and accessible only to the authorized
entities. Moreover, access must also be assured during health
emergency crises such as the recent outbreak, which represents
the greatest test of the flexibility and the efficiency of PHR
sharing among healthcare providers, which ended up an
immense interruption to the healthcare industry. Moreover, the
right to privacy is the most fundamental right for a patient.
Hence, the patient health records in the healthcare sector have
faced issues with privacy breaches, insider outside attacks, and
unauthorized access to crucial patients’ records. As a result,
it pushes more patients to demand more control, security,
and a smoother experience when they want to access their
health records. Furthermore, the lack of interoperability among
the healthcare system and providers and the added weight of
cyber-attacks on an already overwhelmed system have called
for an immediate solution. In this work, we developed a secured
blockchain framework that safeguards patients’ full control over
their health data which can be stored in their private IPFS
and later shared with an authorized provider. Furthermore,
the system ensures privacy and security while handling patient
data, which can only be shared with the patients. The
proposed Security and privacy analysis show promising results
in providing time savings, enhanced confidentiality, and less
disruption in patient-provider interactions.
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Blockchain Framework for Secured On-Demand Patient Health Records Sharing
The healthcare sector is constantly improving
patient health record systems. However, these systems face a
significant challenge when confronted with patient health record
(PHR) data due to its sensitivity. In addition, patient’s data is
stored and spread generally across various healthcare facilities
and among providers. This arrangement of distributed data
becomes problematic whenever patients want to access their
health records and then share them with their care provider,
which yields a lack of interoperability among various healthcare
systems. Moreover, most patient health record systems adopt a
centralized management structure and deploy PHRs to the cloud,
which raises privacy concerns when sharing patient information
over a network. Therefore, it is vital to design a framework
that considers patient privacy and data security when sharing
sensitive information with healthcare facilities and providers.
This paper proposes a blockchain framework for secured patient
health records sharing that allows patients to have full access and
control over their health records. With this novel approach, our
framework applies the Ethereum blockchain smart contracts,
the Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) as an off-chain storage
system, and the NuCypher protocol, which functions as key
management and blockchain-based proxy re-encryption to create
a secured on-demand patient health records sharing system
effectively. Results show that the proposed framework is more
secure than other schemes, and the PHRs will not be accessible
to unauthorized providers or users. In addition, all encrypted
data will only be accessible to and readable by verified entities
set by the patient.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10303705
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE UEMCON2021
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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