International Journal of Control and Automation
Vol. 10, No. 11 (2017), pp.133-144
http//dx.doi.org/10.14257/ijca.2017.10.11.12
ISSN: 2005-4297 IJCA
Copyright © 2017 SERSC Australia
Blockchain-Based User-Centric Records Management System
1
Si-Wan Noh
1
, Youngho Park
2
, Chur Sur
3
, Sang-Uk Shin
2
and Kyung-Hyune Rhee
2
1
Interdisciplinary Program of Information Security
Graduate School Pukyong National University, Republic of Korea
2
Department of IT Convergence and Application Engineering
Pukyong National University, Republic of Korea
3
Department of Information Security, Busan University of Foreign Studies,
Republic of Korea
1
nosiwan@pukyong.ac.kr,
2
pyhoya@pknu.ac.kr,
3
kahlil@bufs.ac.kr
2
shinsu@pknu.ac.kr,
2
khrhee@pknu.ac.kr
Abstract
Sharing of medical records among institutions can present certain risks to patient’s
privacy. An exposure of personal medical records causes damage to the finance, etc.
Sometimes, it could put patient’s life in danger. To achieve secure data sharing between
institutions, many studies use cloud storage to store medical records. However, many
studies suppose that cloud service providers were trustworthy. These systems required a
key establishment with the cloud service providers and all the access logs are governed
by cloud service providers. Patients should ask cloud service providers to check these
access logs. However, it can be forged by cloud service providers during the request
process. In this paper, we propose blockchain based medical records management system
for secure data sharing. In order to share securely, we use proxy re-encryption scheme.
Also, we use blockchain technology to audit access logs without modification.
Keywords: Medical Record Management, Blockchain, Healthcare, Cloud Storage,
Proxy Re-encryption
1. Introduction
In the past, medical records were kept in the form of a paper document by
hospitals. Hence, many patients received medical care service from their family
doctor and a lot of medical records are kept by their family doctor. However, paper
documents required space for storing it. Also, to retrieve a record from document
box is difficult. These days, with the development of the technology, patients
receive healthcare service from specialists in each field. To efficiently share medical
records among specialists, electronic medical record (EMR) was proposed [1].
Traditional paper documents are converted to an electronic format with the
associated information as a collection of records. These records are stored in the
database and provided it only if an access request of this data is valid.
When patients receive medical service at hospitals, they need several
examinations (e.g. inspection result, X-ray image, etc. ) to receive medical treatment.
Even though the patient had an examination just recently from the other hospital, it
might lead to additional costs for the patient and the hospital. Sharing of medical
records between specialists belonging to the same hospital is relatively easy to
achieve. However, cross-institutional sharing of medical record is complex. To
Received (July 5, 2017), Review Result (October 30, 2017), Accepted (November 6, 2017)