Delegated Authorization Framework for EHR Services Using Attribute-Based Encryption

Abstract

Medical organizations find it challenging to adopt cloud-based Electronic Health Records (EHR) services due to the risk of data breaches and the resulting compromise of patient data. Existing authorization models follow a patient-centric approach for EHR management, where the responsibility of authorizing data access is handled at the patients end. This creates a significant overhead for the patient who must authorize every access of their health record. This is not practical given that multiple personnel are typically involved in providing care and that the patient may not always be in a state to provide this authorization. Hence there is a need to develop a proper authorization delegation mechanism for safe, secure and easy to use cloud-based EHR Service management. We present a novel, centralized, attribute-based authorization mechanism that uses Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) and allows for delegated secure access of patient records. This mechanism transfers the service management overhead from the patient to the medical organization and allows easy delegation of cloud-based EHRs access authority to medical providers.