Securing Patient Privacy in E-Health Cloud Using Homomorphic Encryption and Access Control

Abstract

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a digital record shared across different healthcare settings, by network-connected enterprise-wide information systems called EHR systems. Electronic form of personal health records opens new kind of threats to information leakage because electronic data are easy to copy, especially when the records are online. Cloud computing paradigm is one of the popular Health information Technology infrastructures for facilitating Electronic Health Record (EHR) sharing and EHR integration. Healthcare clouds offer new possibilities such as easy and ubiquitous access to medical data, and opportunities for new business models. However, they also bear new risks and raise challenges with respect to security and privacy aspects. Ensuring the security and privacy is a major factor in the cloud computing environment. A secured Cloud based aided medical system is a program designed to aid standard and effective use and access of patient records anytime it is required by medical practitioners. In this work, a system called Secured e-Health in the cloud using Homomorphic Encryption and Access Control (SECHA) was designed. SECHA comprises of five basic component namely; patient, PHR/Object, Access Control Module, User/Subject and Cloud. This system ensure the security of electronic health records stored in the cloud using Homomorphic encryption to secure patient medical records and Bilayer Access Control (BLAC) to give access right to the records. The implemented was carried out using Netbeans IDE. The result obtained also shows that the practice of electronic health record in the cloud will be easily accessible and well secured.