An Architecture for Managing Data Privacy in Healthcare with Blockchain

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Oct 29;22(21):8292. doi: 10.3390/s22218292.

Abstract

With the fast development of blockchain technology in the latest years, its application in scenarios that require privacy, such as health area, have become encouraged and widely discussed. This paper presents an architecture to ensure the privacy of health-related data, which are stored and shared within a blockchain network in a decentralized manner, through the use of encryption with the RSA, ECC, and AES algorithms. Evaluation tests were performed to verify the impact of cryptography on the proposed architecture in terms of computational effort, memory usage, and execution time. The results demonstrate an impact mainly on the execution time and on the increase in the computational effort for sending data to the blockchain, which is justifiable considering the privacy and security provided with the architecture and encryption.

Keywords: DApp; blockchain; cryptography; health data; privacy.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Blockchain*
  • Computer Security
  • Delivery of Health Care
  • Privacy
  • Technology

Grants and funding

This research was funded by national funds through the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) by the project UIDB/05064/2020 (VALORIZA-Research Centre for Endogenous Resource Valorization) and it was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under Project UIDB/04111/2020, and ILIND–Instituto Lusófono de Investigação e Desenvolvimento, project COFAC/ILIND/COPELABS/3/2020.