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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. 

Covid-19 outbreak represents an exceptional test of the flexibility and the efficiency of patient medical records transfer among healthcare providers which ended up in boundless interruption to the healthcare industry. This public crisis has pushed for an urgent innovation of the patient medical records transference (PMRT) system to meet the needs and provide appropriate patient care. Moreover, the drawback effects of Covid-19 changed the healthcare system forever, more patients are requesting more control, secure, and smoother experience when they want access to their health records. However, the problems stem from the lack of interoperability among the healthcare system and providers and the added burden of cyber-attacks on an already stressed system call for an immediate solution. In this work, we present a secured blockchain framework that ensures patients full ownership over their medical data which can be stored in their private IPFS and later can be shared with an authorized provider. The analysis of the proposed security and privacy aspects shows promising results in providing time savings and resulted in enhanced confidentiality and less disruption in patient-provider interactions. 

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. 

The increase in cyberattacks against the healthcare system, notably Electronic Health Records (EHRs) breaches, has cost the healthcare providers more in recent years. This situation is predicted to increase in the coming years as the healthcare systems are proposing a consortium EHRs repository. Due to this reason, it is crucial to deploy solutions that can ensure the security of shared health records. More specifically, maintaining the integrity and consistency of shared EHRs becomes pertinent. In this on-going research, we propose a blockchain-based solution that facilitates a scalable and secured inter-healthcare EHRs exchange. These healthcare systems maintain their records on individual private blockchain networks, and the blockchains interact to exchange patient health history based on request. The proposed solution verifies the integrity and consistency of requests and replies from other healthcare systems. It presents them in a standard format that can be easily understood by different healthcare nodes. The verification steps guard against malicious activities on both stored and in transit EHRs from insider and outsider threat actors. We evaluate the security analysis against frequently encounter outsider and insider threats within a healthcare system. The preliminary result shows that the architecture can detect and prevent threat actors from uploading compromising EHRs into the network and prevents unauthorized retrieval of patient's information.