Hyperledger blockchain based secure storage of electronic health record system in edge nodes

Abstract

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a database for storing patients medical information collected from different sources such as smart wearable devices, smart sensors and diagnostic imaging equipment. An EHR contains sensitive private information for the patients and the treatment of their diseases. Furthermore, it’s often shared among different members consists of healthcare providers, insurance companies, medical researchers, and others. The main difficulty for EHR information management is the result of gathering, storing, and sharing patient healthcare without affecting privacy and security. Blockchain has recently proposed an efficient way to manage EHR data. This paper provides hybrid architecture for EHR data management by using both Hyperledger blockchain network in on-chain and edge node in off-chain. In this architecture is used to authenticate user without affecting sensitive patient’s information and also used to authenticate the encrypted EHR information in edge node. In the on-chain approach EHR activities and Patient authentication activities are recorded in the blockchain for the purpose of accountability and traceability. Edge nodes stored the encrypted EHR data in the off-chain method. So the combination of on-chain and off-chain approaches only allows the authorized data user who has to meet the EHR access activities and to decrypt the EHR data. If the EHR information is alter by an unauthorized user, the hash code is newly generated which is different from old hash code stored in the blockchain. As the result the user can easily detect that their EHR information has been hacked.