Exploring the Key Attributes of Blockchain for Medical Data Protection: A Systematic Review
Abstract
This article addresses the protection of medical data in health information systems, focusing on the growing adoption of electronic health records (EHRs). It recognises the security challenges inherent in centralised systems and advocates for the secure exchange of medical data. The methodology follows the principles of the PRISMA statement, using search engines such as SCOPUS, PUBMED and IEEE XPLORE to identify 20 relevant documents. These papers focus on key attributes of blockchain technology: access control, data privacy, data security and encryption. The results indicate that access control is the most recurring attribute, followed by data privacy, data security and encryption. The discussion highlights the practical applicability of these attributes, improving patient confidence and medical workflow efficiency. The conclusions affirm the relevance of the blockchain in medical data protection, pointing to opportunities for future research, especially in less developed healthcare settings. The study provides a comprehensive framework for healthcare professionals and developers, highlighting the need for further application and exploration of implementation strategies through specific case studies. In summary, the systematic review makes a significant contribution to the understanding and application of blockchain in the secure management of medical information globally. It highlights the importance of key attributes of blockchain in improving the security, privacy and integrity of medical data, providing a comprehensive perspective for practitioners and developers interested in this area.
Downloads
References
Z. Sun, D. Han, D. Li, X. Wang, C. C. Chang, and Z. Wu, “A blockchain-based secure storage scheme for medical information,” Eurasip J. Wirel. Commun. Netw., vol. 2022, no. 1, 2022, doi: 10.1186/s13638-022-02122-6.
K. Y. Abeywardena, B. Attanayaka, K. Periyasamy, S. Gunarathna, U. Prabhathi, and S. Kudagoda, “Blockchain based Patients’ detail management System,” ICAC 2020 - 2nd Int. Conf. Adv. Comput. Proc., pp. 458–463, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ICAC51239.2020.9357163.
S. Lee, J. Kim, Y. Kwon, T. Kim, and S. Cho, “Privacy Preservation in Patient Information Exchange Systems Based on Blockchain: System Design Study,” J. Med. Internet Res., vol. 24, no. 3, 2022, doi: 10.2196/29108.
M. Abouali, K. Sharma, O. Ajayi, and T. Saadawi, “Performance Evaluation of Secured Blockchain-Based Patient Health Records Sharing Framework,” 2022 IEEE Int. IOT, Electron. Mechatronics Conf. IEMTRONICS 2022, 2022, doi: 10.1109/IEMTRONICS55184.2022.9795759.
S. Nandi, J. Sarkis, A. A. Hervani, and M. M. Helms, “Redesigning Supply Chains using Blockchain-Enabled Circular Economy and COVID-19 Experiences,” Sustain. Prod. Consum., vol. 27, pp. 10–22, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.spc.2020.10.019.
F. Chen et al., “Data Access Control Based on Blockchain in Medical Cyber Physical Systems,” Secur. Commun. Networks, vol. 2021, 2021, doi: 10.1155/2021/3395537.
B. S. Egala, A. K. Pradhan, V. Badarla, and S. P. Mohanty, “Fortified-Chain: A Blockchain-Based Framework for Security and Privacy-Assured Internet of Medical Things with Effective Access Control,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 8, no. 14, pp. 11717–11731, 2021, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3058946.
S. Ghaffaripour and A. Miri, “Application of Blockchain to Patient-Centric Access Control in Medical Data Management Systems,” 2019 IEEE 10th Annu. Inf. Technol. Electron. Mob. Commun. Conf. IEMCON 2019, pp. 190–196, 2019, doi: 10.1109/IEMCON.2019.8936186.
F. Zhao, J. Yu, and B. Yan, “Towards cross-chain access control model for medical data sharing,” Procedia Comput. Sci., vol. 202, pp. 330–335, 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2022.04.045.
C. D. Parameswari, “Healthcare data protection based on blockchain using solidity,” pp. 577–580, 2020.
J. Liu, X. Li, L. Ye, H. Zhang, X. Du, and M. Guizani, “BPDS: A Blockchain Based Privacy-Preserving Data Sharing for Electronic Medical Records,” 2018 IEEE Glob. Commun. Conf. GLOBECOM 2018 - Proc., pp. 1–6, 2018, doi: 10.1109/GLOCOM.2018.8647713.
H. Saidi, N. Labraoui, A. A. A. Ari, L. A. Maglaras, and J. H. M. Emati, “DSMAC: Privacy-Aware Decentralized Self-Management of Data Access Control Based on Blockchain for Health Data,” IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 101011–101028, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3207803.
E. Y. Daraghmi, Y. A. Daraghmi, and S. M. Yuan, “MedChain: A design of blockchain-based system for medical records access and permissions management,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 164595–164613, 2019, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2952942.
N. P. H. Kumar and S. Prabhudeva, “An Authorization Framework for Preserving Privacy of Big Medical Data via Blockchain in Cloud Server,” Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl., vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 140–150, 2022, doi: 10.14569/IJACSA.2022.0130319.
T. Rupasinghe, F. Burstein, and C. Rudolph, “Blockchain based dynamic patient consent: A privacy-preserving data acquisition architecture for clinical data analytics,” 40th Int. Conf. Inf. Syst. ICIS 2019, no. Bacchus 2017, pp. 1–9, 2019.
D. El Majdoubi, H. El Bakkali, and S. Sadki, “SmartMedChain: A Blockchain-Based Privacy-Preserving Smart Healthcare Framework,” J. Healthc. Eng., vol. 2021, 2021, doi: 10.1155/2021/4145512.
H. M. Hussien, S. M. Yasin, N. I. Udzir, and M. I. H. Ninggal, “Blockchain-based access control scheme for secure shared personal health records over decentralised storage,” Sensors, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 1–36, 2021, doi: 10.3390/s21072462.
D. Zhang, S. Wang, Y. Zhang, Q. Zhang, and Y. Zhang, “A Secure and Privacy-Preserving Medical Data Sharing via Consortium Blockchain,” Secur. Commun. Networks, vol. 2022, 2022, doi: 10.1155/2022/2759787.
R. H. Hylock and X. Zeng, “A blockchain framework for patient-centered health records and exchange (healthChain): Evaluation and proof-of-concept study,” J. Med. Internet Res., vol. 21, no. 8, pp. 1–30, 2019, doi: 10.2196/13592.
Y. Sharma and B. Balamurugan, “Preserving the Privacy of Electronic Health Records using Blockchain,” Procedia Comput. Sci., vol. 173, no. 2019, pp. 171–180, 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2020.06.021.
A. Ali et al., “Deep Learning Based Homomorphic Secure Search-Able Encryption for Keyword Search in Blockchain Healthcare System: A Novel Approach to Cryptography,” Sensors, vol. 22, no. 2, 2022, doi: 10.3390/s22020528.
Y. H. Park, Y. Kim, S. O. Lee, and K. Ko, “Secure outsourced blockchain-based medical data sharing system using proxy re-encryption,” Appl. Sci., vol. 11, no. 20, 2021, doi: 10.3390/app11209422.
S. Barbaria, M. C. Mont, E. Ghadafi, H. Mahjoubi Machraoui, and H. B. Rahmouni, “Leveraging Patient Information Sharing Using Blockchain-Based Distributed Networks,” IEEE Access, vol. 10, pp. 106334–106351, 2022, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3206046.
Y. Chen, L. Meng, H. Zhou, and G. Xue, “A Blockchain-Based Medical Data Sharing Mechanism with Attribute-Based Access Control and Privacy Protection,” Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput., vol. 2021, 2021, doi: 10.1155/2021/6685762.
M. J. Page et al., “Declaracion PRISMA 2020 : una guía actualizada para la publicació de revisiones sistema,” vol. 74, no. 9, pp. 790–799, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.recesp.2021.06.016.
A. Tong, K. Flemming, E. Mcinnes, S. Oliver, and J. Craig, “Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative research : ENTREQ,” no. Figure 1, pp. 1–8, 2012.
E. F. France et al., “Improving reporting of meta-ethnography : the eMERGe reporting guidance,” vol. 0, pp. 1–13, 2019.
J. J. Yepes-Nuñez, G. Urrútia, M. Romero-García, and S. Alonso-Fernández, “The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews,” Rev. Esp. Cardiol., vol. 74, no. 9, pp. 790–799, 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.recesp.2021.06.016.
M. Abubakar, Z. Jaroucheh, A. Al Dubai, and B. Buchanan, “A Decentralised Authentication and Access Control Mechanism for Medical Wearable Sensors Data,” Aug. 2021. doi: 10.1109/COINS51742.2021.9524172.
J. Tao and L. Ling, “Practical Medical Files Sharing Scheme Based on Blockchain and Decentralized Attribute-Based Encryption,” IEEE Access, vol. 9, pp. 118771–118781, 2021, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3107591.
- Conceptualization
- Data curation
- Formal Analysis
- Investigation
- Methodology
- Project administration
- Supervision
- Validation
- Visualization
- Writing - original draft
- Writing - review & editing
- Conceptualization
- Formal Analysis
- Investigation
- Methodology
- Software
- Validation
- Visualization
- Writing - original draft
- Writing - review & editing
Copyright (c) 2024 Innovation and Software
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The authors exclusively grant the right to publish their article to the Innovation and Software Journal, which may formally edit or modify the approved text to comply with their own editorial standards and with universal grammatical standards, prior to publication; Likewise, our journal may translate the approved manuscripts into as many languages as it deems necessary and disseminates them in several countries, always giving public recognition to the author or authors of the research.
