Efficient Designated Verifier Signature for Secure Cross-Chain Health Data Sharing in BIoMT

Blockchain technology brings a method for cross-institution health data sharing through the systems of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). As different medical institutions compete to establish their own blockchain ledgers, it leads to new problems of “data island.” In this article, a relay chain-based multichain fusion (MCF) model has been designed for blockchain-enabled IoMT (BIoMT), which can achieve cross-institution health data sharing by composing different blockchains together. In this MCF model, the existing patient private health chain, medical institution chain, and government supervision chain compose a cross-chain health data-sharing platform, which extends the storage capacity of health data, and the capacity of data sharing among different departments, institutions, and fields. Meanwhile, a cross-chain transaction model has been established which helps to achieve secure cross-chain transactions among different medical institutions. Then, to guarantee user privacy in the cross-chain transaction process, a designated verifier signature (DVS) scheme is proposed. Only the designated verifier can verify this DVS and other users cannot identify the real signer. This DVS also can achieve the anonymity of the signer as the third party cannot distinguish the signature generated by the signer or the verifier. Moreover, the proposed DVS scheme can be proved to capture the unforgeability, nontransferability, and signer anonymity with the random oracle model. The theoretical analyses and efficiency comparisons are given which show the efficiency of the proposed DVS scheme compared with similar schemes. The performance simulation of the cross-chain transaction shows that the MCF model is secure and practical for cross-chain health data sharing among different BIoMT systems.