Blockchain: A Panacea for Health Cloud-

Based Data Security and Privacy

Abbas Jafar
HPC Lab
Computer Engineering
Myongji University
Paper Detail

Paper Title: Blockchain: A Panacea for Health Cloud-Based Data Security

and Privacy
Paper Published: IEEE Cloud Computing
Published Year: Jan/Feb 2018
Authors: Christian Esposito, Alfredo De Dantis, Genny Tortora etc….
 Goal

• The goal of this paper is to use of Blockchain technology to protect

healthcare data hosted within the cloud.
 What is healthcare?
• Healthcare is a data-intensive domain where large amount of data is created,
disseminated, stored, and accessed daily.

Example:
Patient Medical tests Radiographer/Physician Stored
Accessed again
 Health records in electronic forms and health
information systems
Electronic Medical Records (EMRs)
• Contain medical and clinical data
• Stored the data by responsible healthcare provider
• Facilitate the retrieval and analysis
 Health Information System (HIS)
• Create new EMR Instances
• Store, query and retrieve store EMRs of interest
• Can be graphical user interface or web service
Electronic Health Records (HERs):
• Allow patient to move with medical history
• Available to multiple healthcare providers from one city to other or other country.
• HERs have a richer data structure then EMRs
 Smart Devices
• Smart devices can be installed by the health provides to measure the well-being of
patients.
• Inform/facilitate medical treatment and monitoring of patients.
• Wide range of apps in health, fitness, weight-loss etc.
• Leu and collaborators proposed smartphone based wireless body sensor network
to collect user physiological data using body sensors in smart shirt.
Personal Health Records(PHR): Patients involved in their data collection,
monitoring of their health conditions etc..
 Challenges with PHRs

• Can we rely on the data collected by the patients themselves?

• Relevant healthcare providers certified data collected by the patients?
• Who should be the legally liable for a misdiagnose or delayed diagnosis?
 Cloud Computing

• Real-time data sharing regardless of geographical locations.

• Provide resource elasticity as needed.
• Handles big data to obtain useful insights from the analysis of big health data.
 How cloud facilitate sharing of
healthcare?
• CC used to interconnect the
different healthcare providers and
their PHRs used by the providers
to deal with any sudden or seasonal
changes and so on.
 Security and Privacy
• Healthcare contain personal and sensitive information that may be
attractive to cybercriminals.
• Ensure the security of EMR/HER/PHR ecosystem is crucial due to the
complexity b/w the systems and components.
• Privacy and integrity of healthcare data must be protected from the
externals and internal attackers with the system.
• Attacks can be intentional or unintentional and organizations be penalized.
Blockchain to the Rescue?
 Key Benefits of Deploying Blockchain
• Agreement can be reached without the involvement of a trusted mediator
• Patients have control over their data
• Medical history as Blockchain data is complete consistent and easily
distributed.
• Changes to the blockchain are visible to all members of the patient network
and data insertions are immutable,
• Any unauthorized modifications can be trivially detected.
 Challenges
1. Strong data integrity feature of blockchain results in immutability that
any data, once stored in blockchain can’t altered or deleted. In health
laws due to the rights of individuals to request personal data to be erased.
2. Another issue to store the data in blockchain, BC designed to record
transaction data.
 Suggested Solution
• Use of off-chain storage of data, where data is stored outside the BC or
distributed database but hashes of data are stored in BC.
• Healthcare data is stored off-chain and may be secured, corrected and
erased.
• Immutable hashes of the healthcare data stored on-chain for the
authenticity and accuracy of the off-chain medical records.
 Companies applying blockchain to healthcare
security
burstIQ
• Industry: Big Data, Cybersecurity, Software
• Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
• What they do: Platform helps healthcare companies safely
and securely manage massive amounts of patient data. Its
blockchain technology enables the safekeeping, sale,
sharing or license of data while maintaining strict
compliance with HIPAA rules.
• Blockchain application: The company uses blockchain to
improve the way medical data is shared and used.
 FACTOM
• Industry: IT, Enterprise Software
• Location: Austin, Texas
• What they do: Creates products that help the healthcare industry
securely store digital records on the company’s blockchain platform
that's accessible only by hospitals and healthcare administrators.
• Blockchain application: Factom employs blockchain technology to
securely store digital health records.
• Real-life impact: In June of 2018, got a grant of $200,000 from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security to integrating secure data
from Border Patrol cameras and sensors in order to better understand
the impacts of blockchain in "a realistic field environment."
 MEDICALCHAIN
• Industry: Electronic Health Record, Medical
• Location: London, England
• What they do: Maintains the integrity of health records while
establishing a single point of truth. Doctors, hospitals and laboratories
can all request patient information that has a record of origin and
protects the patient's identity from outside sources.
• Blockchain application: Medicalchain's blockchain-based platform
maintains a record of origin and protects patient identity.
• Real-life impact: In May of 2018, announced of MyClinic.com. A
telemedicine platform, enables patients to consult with their doctors via
video and pay for those consultations with "MedTokens."
Thanks…!!!