A homomorphic encryption-based system for securely managing personal health metrics data

Hardware and software solutions for the collection of personal health information continue to evolve. The reliable gathering of personal health information, previously usually possible only in dedicated medical settings, has recently become possible through wearable specialized medical devices. Among other drawbacks, these devices usually do not store the data locally and offer, at best, limited basic data processing features and few advanced processing capabilities for the collected personal health data. In this paper, we describe an integrated personal health information system that allows secure storage and processing of medical data in the cloud by using a comprehensive homomorphic encryption model to preserve data privacy. The system collects the user data through a client application module, typically installed on the user's smartphone or smartwatch, and securely transports the data to the cloud backend powered by IBM Bluemix. The data are stored by the IBM Cloudant infrastructure, while the homomorphic processing of the encrypted data is performed using the Apache Spark service, which is also made available by the IBM Bluemix platform. The event-based handlers are triggered by the IBM OpenWhisk programming service. The initial prototype has been tested using a real-world use case, which is described.