Blockchain Enabled Privacy Security Module for Sharing Electronic Health Records (EHRs)

Abstract

Currently, storing sensitive data related to patient’s medical healthcare into Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has developed rapidly. Specifically, the distribution of healthcare records has brought convenience to hospitals and other different third parties in accessing this sensitive medical health information of patients for various purposes, thus leading to the generation of big data. In the field of healthcare, big data plays a significant role as it can be employed in predicting outcomes of diseases, preventing co-morbidities fatality and saving the cost spent on medical treatment. However, it is most likely to lead to both security breaches and privacy violations in the process of data collection. In this paper, a platform employing the blockchain technology for privacy preservation during the process of collecting, managing and distributing EHR data is proposed. This paper aims to ensure the total privacy, integrity and access control of distributed electronic health records possessed by the data owners in the process of it being distributed on the blockchain. Simulated results demonstrate that the system proposed by us, which is totally transparent, is able to ensure perfect privacy within the distributed network of sharing EHRs in the medical setting by employing the blockchain.