MedExChain: Enabling Secure and Efficient PHR Sharing Across Heterogeneous Blockchains

With the proliferation of intelligent healthcare systems, patients’ personal health records (PHR) generated by the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) in real-time play a vital role in disease diagnosis. The integration of emerging blockchain technologies significantly enhanced the data security inside intelligent medical systems. However, data sharing across different systems based on varied blockchain architectures is still constrained by the unsolved performance and security challenges. This article constructs a cross-chain data sharing scheme, termed MedExChain, which aims to securely share PHR across heterogeneous blockchain systems. The MedExChain scheme ensures that PHR can be shared across chains even under the performance limitations of IoMT devices. Additionally, the scheme incorporates cryptographic reverse firewall (CRF) and a blockchain audit mechanism to defend against both internal and external security threats. The robustness of our scheme is validated through BAN logic, Scyther tool, chosen plaintext attack (CPA) and algorithm substitution attack (ASA) security analysis verification. Extensive evaluations demonstrate that MedExChain significantly minimizes computation and communication overhead, making it suitable for IoMT devices and fostering the efficient circulation of PHR across diverse blockchain systems.