Security-Aware and Privacy-Preserving Personal Health Record Sharing Using Consortium Blockchain

With the fast boom of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices and an increasing focus on personal health, personal health data are extensively collected by IoMT and stored as personal health records (PHRs). PHRs are frequently shared for accurate diagnosis, prognosis prediction, health advice consulting, etc. Since PHRs are highly private, the data-sharing process leads to wide-ranging concerns on privacy leakage and security compromise. Existing research has shown that the centralized systems, as the mainstream mode, are under the great risks. Motivated by this, we propose a consortium blockchain-based PHR management and sharing scheme, which is both security aware and privacy preserving. We adopt the interplanetary file system (IPFS) to store the PHR ciphertext of IoMT. Then, zero-knowledge proof can provide evidence for verifying keyword index authentication on blockchain. Moreover, the scheme jointly leverages modified attribute-based cryptographic primitives and tailor-made smart contracts to achieve secure search, privacy preservation, and personalized access control in IoMT scenarios. Security analysis is conducted to show that the designed protocols attain the expected design goals. This is followed by extensive evaluation results derived from real-world data sets, which demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme over current leading ones.

I. Introduction

With the application of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in practice, a large number of personal health data are collected and recorded as personal health records (PHRs) through Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The sharing of PHRs is a significant problem in modern IoMT system [1]. The global PHRs market is worth USD 26.8 billion in 2020, with a probable compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach 3.7% by 2028 [2]. The rationale behind the boom of PHR sharing is that it not only helps patients record medical history to improve the accuracy of disease diagnosis [3] but also potentially provides abundant data for disease study [4]. In addition, it provides vital evidences for judging medical negligence and assessing medical insurance [5]. Therefore, PHR sharing with IoMT has attracted extensive attentions from various parties, such as academia, industries, and government sectors [6], [7].