Sec-Health: A Blockchain-Based Protocol for Securing Health Records

Abstract

Storing and sharing health records through electronic systems pose security risks. To address them, several countries’ regulations have established that healthcare information systems must fulfill security properties (confidentiality, access control, integrity, revocation and anonymity) and complementary ones (emergency access and interoperability). Upon tackling these issues, several proposals present security limitations and/or address specific properties only. We propose Sec-Health, a blockchain-based protocol that secures health records, addressing all of the main security and complementary properties defined in current regulations. We show that Sec-Health is a suitable solution by analyzing it under several attack scenarios and describing how it overcomes the problems of existing solutions. Furthermore, we evaluate a Sec-Health Proof of Concept, showing that it can reduce from 26% up to 90% the time to access health records, and reduce up to 50% client-side memory overhead, compared to related work.

Keywords

• Blockchain
• computer security
• data security
• electronic healthcare
• health information management
• regulation