A healthcare data management system: Blockchain enabled IPFS providing algorithmic solution for increased privacy preserving scalability and interoperability

Abstract

Finding a feasible and effective approach to sharing a large volume of healthcare data has been the focus of recent studies. Several techniques evolved over the years for healthcare data management can be categorized into three distinct categories. The first category mainly focused on deploying the centralized structure utilizing the cloud-based system, however, central system failure, the privacy of the data, and interoperability remain the major concerns of this approach. Later, in the second category, these limitations were addressed by implementing a decentralized system based on blockchain technology. The increased complexity of the healthcare data and the need for the inclusion of medical imaging restricted the scalability and storage efficiency of this decentralized method. Eventually, this led to the development of an integrated approach combining techniques such as InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) with blockchain. Even with the tremendous advancements, challenges like interoperability, scalability, and privacy still exist. This paper primarily focuses on increasing the privacy and security of healthcare data sharing by combining the authentication algorithm with the Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) key exchange keeping the parameters such as interoperability, scalability, and storage efficiency intact. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed system, performance monitoring along with a novel benchmarking technique was utilized. Also, the proposed system has been compared with the existing frameworks on different parameters such as access control, cryptographic algorithms, decentralized framework, scalability, performance evaluation, benchmarking, etc. The obtained results suggest that the proposed system provides an integrated solution for efficient healthcare data management that is secured, decentralized yet interoperable and scalable.