Secure and Decentralized Management of Health Records

Abstract

The electronic Health (eHealth) record transforms the conventional healthcare domain into a digital healthcare domain that advances the service to the people. The eHealthcare gained more attention these days due to its benefits such as ease in transferring the record, available at all times, and effortless search and access. However, security and user privacy slow down the broader implementation of eHealthcare in various hospitals and countries. To utilize the effectiveness of eHealthcare and protect the data against various attacks, this chapter proposes a blockchain-based electronic health record management system. The encrypted eHealth records are stored on the cloud or Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) and the meta-data of the records on the blockchain to ensure data availability, integrity, and confidentiality. The proposed system provides immutable logging of access information for audit and regulatory compliance. In addition, the patient’s redundant account problem and data inaccessibility during the patient’s unresponsive state are addressed. The proposed system is implemented by modifying the goethereum implementation to analyze the overhead and applicability. The implementation results, security, and overhead analysis substantiate the proposed eHealthcare management system.