Privacy-friendly platform for healthcare data in cloud based on blockchain environment

Abstract

Data in cloud has always been a point of attraction for the cyber attackers. Nowadays healthcare data in cloud has become their new interest. Attacks on these healthcare data can result in annihilating consequences for the healthcare organizations. Decentralization of these cloud data can minimize the effect of attacks. Storing and running computation on sensitive private healthcare data in cloud are possible by decentralization which is enabled by peer to peer (P2P) network. By leveraging the decentralized or distributed property, blockchain technology ensures the accountability and integrity. Different solutions have been proposed to control the effect of attacks using decentralized approach but these solutions somehow failed to ensure overall privacy of patient centric systems. In this paper, we present a patient centric healthcare data management system using blockchain technology as storage which helps to attain privacy. Cryptographic functions are used to encrypt patient’s data and to ensure pseudonymity. We analyze the data processing procedures and also the cost effectiveness of the smart contracts used in our system.

Publication
Future Generation Computer Systems