Hyperledger Healthchain: Patient-Centric IPFS-Based Storage of Health Records

Vinodhini Mani,Saleh Alghamdi,Osamah Ibrahim Khalaf,Prakash Manickam,Youseef Alotaibi

doi:10.3390/electronics10233003

Abstract

Blockchain-based electronic health system growth is hindered by privacy, confidentiality, and security. By protecting against them, this research aims to develop cybersecurity measurement approaches to ensure the security and privacy of patient information using blockchain technology in healthcare. Blockchains need huge resources to store big data. This paper presents an innovative solution, namely patient-centric healthcare data management (PCHDM). It comprises the following: (i) in an on-chain health record database, hashes of health records are stored as health record chains in Hyperledger fabric, and (ii) off-chain solutions that encrypt actual health data and store it securely over the interplanetary file system (IPFS) which is the decentralized cloud storage system that ensures scalability, confidentiality, and resolves the problem of blockchain data storage. A security smart contract hosted through container technology with Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus ensures patient privacy by verifying patient preferences before sharing health records. The Distributed Ledger technology performance is tested under hyper ledger caliper benchmarks in terms of transaction latency, resource utilization, and transaction per second. The model provides stakeholders with increased confidence in collaborating and sharing their health records.

Highlights

Providing a secure and private access control model is one of the most critical aspects of healthcare
In this paper, we describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of patient-centric healthcare data management (PCHDM), an end-to-end secure Health record chain network architecture based on PCHDMACSmart Contracts
By leveraging Health record chain networks, interplanetary file system (IPFS), and Smart contract, this framework ensures the safety of health records between stakeholders

Summary

Introduction

Providing a secure and private access control model is one of the most critical aspects of healthcare. Big data are used to store and access a large amount of health information over the Internet in the big data age. Traditional electronic health record (EHR) systems present numerous privacy and security challenges despite their ease of use and reliability. [1] Health record (HR) contains a lot of sensitive information about patients and diagnoses; it is considered the most sensitive data collection method. HR data has, become more susceptible to breach due to the advancement of the internet and advancement in digital healthcare systems [2]. The security and privacy of HR data need to be taken into account when assessing a decentralized and trust-based approach [3]

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