Towards Privacy-Preserving Medical Cloud Computing Using Homomorphic Encryption

Abstract

Personal health monitoring tools, such as commercially available wireless ECG patches, can significantly reduce healthcare costs by allowing patient monitoring outside the healthcare organizations. These tools transmit the acquired medical data into the cloud, which could provide an invaluable diagnosis tool for healthcare professionals. Despite the potential of such systems to revolutionize the medical field, the adoption of medical cloud computing in general has been slow due to the strict privacy regulations on patient health information. We present a novel medical cloud computing approach that eliminates privacy concerns associated with the cloud provider. Our approach capitalizes on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which enables computations on private health information without actually observing the underlying data. For a feasibility study, we present a working implementation of a long-term cardiac health monitoring application using a well-established open source FHE library.

Technical and Economic Models for a Global Patient co-Owned Cloud (GPOC)

“…These ranged from blockchain technologies to other distributed graph-based ecosystems. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] In our GPOC systematic review and meta-analysis, we also looked specifically at the technical requirements for the construction of a Global Patient co-Owned Cloud (GPOC), i.e., with a focus on the infrastructures used discussed below. A sandbox environment enables research into these and other emerging infrastructures.…”

“…Our approach leverages a modular protocol architecture to serve as a way of unifying emerging technologies from across the globe with the intention of facilitating the development of new tools to support co-ownership. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] The reason for a modular architecture is that stakeholders; patients, their families, clinicians, organisations, and governments have different regulatory requirements or preferences and can remove or add elements to support their respective needs. Such needs could be modelled as a consensus-based optimisation construct allowing the patient to be at the centre of the conversation with all stakeholder input through their personal health record.…”

“…Ethereum was conceived by the programmer Vitalik Buterin in 2013. [30][31][32] Ethereum is the native cryptocurrency of the platform used to power development of applications on the blockchain. Among cryptocurrencies, Ethereum is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization.…”

Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis for a Global Patient co-Owned Cloud (GPOC)

“…The response ratio was performed on 20 substudies looking at mean encryption times which demonstrated an effect size estimate of 0.16milliseconds. The literature review of the meta-analysed articles presented several studies on encryption (Abaid et al presented 800-1200 ms, 16 Chennam et al 8654-10025 ms, 17 Florence et al 29-98 ms, 18 Kocabas et al 80-5040 ms, 19 Preetha 9,919-280.43 ms, 8 Saravannan et al 8-11.7 ms, and Sukte et al compared six schemes (Blow sh, RSA, ASE, El-Gamal, ECC, Modi ed El-Gamal, and Modi ed ECC) with ranges 0.000058-0.027614 ms, 13 and where the metaanalysis gave a pooled effect size estimate of 80.76 milliseconds, an effect size estimate of 1.86 milliseconds and p = 0.0005).…”

“…These are clinical benchmarks for PHR's that subsequent studies building on this infrastructure could improve upon. In the review several studies presented decryption, e.g., Chennam et al 4236-7546 ms, 1716 Florence et al 16-74 ms, 18 Kocabas et al 30-2290 ms, 19 Sangeetha et al 4-12 ms, 20 Preetha et al 90.11-71,167 ms 8 . Moreover, Sukte et al compared six schemes (Blow sh, RSA, ASE, El-Gamal, ECC, Modi ed El-Gamal, and Modi ed ECC) with ranges 0.000086-0.00054 ms, 13 The meta-analysis gave a pooled effect size estimate of 59.50 milliseconds, an effect size estimate of 1.70 milliseconds and p = 0.0005) performances for their proposed algorithms and security solutions.…”