Blockchain-Based Approach for e-Health Data Access Management with Privacy Protection

Blockchain is a technology that offers the ability to create new business models and solves trust issues in a more efficient way. It can lead to many research opportunities and business innovations. Academia and industry proposed many blockchain based software solutions within a wide range of domains. In this paper we present a system design where blockchain technology is proposed to be used in the healthcare system, where the vital information regarding the medical analyses are shared between hospitals, medical clinics and research institutes based on access policies defined by the patients. In order to protect confidential data, our solution involves the use of two types of chains: a private one, the sidechain, which keeps information about real ID of the patients, and a public one, the mainchain, which stores information about patients' health data marked with a temporary ID. To test it, we developed the design using Hyperledger Fabric framework. Presented experimental results show good performance of the system in relation to the following metrics: 1) the time needed to identify the medical data for a particular patient, and 2) the mainchain propagation time of all the blocks within the peer to peer network.