Patients often have their healthcare data stored in centralized systems, leading to challenges when reconciling or consolidating their data across providers due to centralized databases that store patient identities. The challenges disrupt the flow of patient care where time is sensitive for both patients and providers. Decentralized technologies have enabled a new identity modelβSelf-Sovereign Identity (SSI)βthat grants individuals the right to freely control, access, and share their own data. This work proposes a system that achieves SSI in a semi-permissioned blockchain network using an open protocol as the certificate of authority and several guidelines for securely handling transactions in the network. Open protocols like Keccak can grant access to a permission-based network such as Hyperledger Fabric. The network architecture ensures data security and privacy through mechanisms of multi-signature transactions and guidelines for storing transactions locally, making this architecture ideal for privacy-centered use cases, such as healthcare data-sharing applications. The ultimate goal is to give patients full control over their identity and other data derived from their identity within a semi-permissioned network.
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, patientβs 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. more »
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10303705
- Journal Name:
- IEEE UEMCON2021
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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