International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security

International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security (국제컴퓨터통신보호논문지학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Blockchain-based Data Storage Security Architecture for e-Health Care Systems: A Case of Government of Tanzania Hospital Management Information System

  • Mnyawi, Richard (The School of Computational and Communication Sciences and Engineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology) ;
  • Kombe, Cleverence (Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT), International Telecommunication Union (ITU)) ;
  • Sam, Anael (The School of Computational and Communication Sciences and Engineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology) ;
  • Nyambo, Devotha (The School of Computational and Communication Sciences and Engineering, The Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology)
  • Received : 2022.03.05
  • Published : 2022.03.30
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

Health information systems (HIS) are facing security challenges on data privacy and confidentiality. These challenges are based on centralized system architecture creating a target for malicious attacks. Blockchain technology has emerged as a trending technology with the potential to improve data security. Despite the effectiveness of this technology, still HIS are suffering from a lack of data privacy and confidentiality. This paper presents a blockchain-based data storage security architecture integrated with an e-Health care system to improve its security. The study employed a qualitative research method where data were collected using interviews and document analysis. Execute-order-validate Fabric's storage security architecture was implemented through private data collection, which is the combination of the actual private data stored in a private state, and a hash of that private data to guarantee data privacy. The key findings of this research show that data privacy and confidentiality are attained through a private data policy. Network peers are decentralized with blockchain only for hash storage to avoid storage challenges. Cost-effectiveness is achieved through data storage within a database of a Hyperledger Fabric. The overall performance of Fabric is higher than Ethereum. Ethereum's low performance is due to its execute-validate architecture which has high computation power with transaction inconsistencies. E-Health care system administrators should be trained and engaged with blockchain architectural designs for health data storage security. Health policymakers should be aware of blockchain technology and make use of the findings. The scientific contribution of this study is based on; cost-effectiveness of secured data storage, the use of hashes of network data stored in each node, and low energy consumption of Fabric leading to high performance.

Keywords

References

  1. S. Biswas, K. Sharif, F. Li, and S. Mohanty, "Blockchain for e-health-care systems: Easier said than done," Computer, vol. 53, pp. 57-67, 2020.
  2. S. Shamshad, K. Mahmood, S. Kumari, and C.-M. Chen, "A secure blockchain-based e-health records storage and sharing scheme," Journal of Information Security and Applications, vol. 55, p. 102590, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jisa.2020.102590
  3. W. Liu, S. Zhu, T. Mundie, and U. Krieger, "Advanced block-chain architecture for e-health systems," in 2017 IEEE 19th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom), 2017, pp. 1-6.
  4. H. Wang and J. Zhang, "Blockchain Based Data Integrity Verification for Large-Scale IoT Data," IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 164996-165006, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2952635
  5. K. Tsoulias, G. Palaiokrassas, G. Fragkos, A. Litke, and T. A. Varvarigou, "A Graph Model Based Blockchain Implementation for Increasing Performance and Security in Decentralized Ledger Systems," IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 130952-130965, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.3006383
  6. Y. Sun, L. Zhang, G. Feng, B. Yang, B. Cao, and M. A. Imran, "Blockchain-enabled wireless Internet of Things: Performance analysis and optimal communication node deployment," IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, pp. 5791-5802, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/jiot.2019.2905743
  7. C. Kombe, A. Sam, M. Ally, and A. Finne, "Blockchain Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa: Where does it fit in Healthcare Systems: A case of Tanzania," Journal of Health Informatics in Developing Countries, vol. 13, 2019.
  8. X. Zheng, R. R. Mukkamala, R. Vatrapu, and J. Ordieres-Mere, "Blockchain-based personal health data sharing system using cloud storage," in 2018 IEEE 20th International Conference on e-Health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom), 2018, pp. 1-6.
  9. A. Shahnaz, U. Qamar, and A. Khalid, "Using blockchain for electronic health records," IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 147782-147795, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2946373
  10. R. Akkaoui, X. Hei, and W. Cheng, "EdgeMediChain: A Hybrid Edge Blockchain-Based Framework for Health Data Exchange," IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 113467-113486, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2020.3003575
  11. M. Madine, K. Salah, R. Jayaraman, I. Yaqoob, Y. Al-Hammadi, S. Ellahham, et al., "Fully Decentralized Multi-Party Consent Management for Secure Sharing of Patient Health Records," IEEE Access, 2020.
  12. S. Biswas, K. Sharif, F. Li, I. Alam, and S. Mohanty, "DAAC: Digital Asset Access Control in a Unified Blockchain Based E-Health System," IEEE Transactions on Big Data, 2020.
  13. R. Kumar, N. Marchang, and R. Tripathi, "Distributed off-chain storage of patient diagnostic reports in healthcare system using IPFS and blockchain," in 2020 International Conference on COMmunication Systems & NETworkS (COMSNETS), 2020, pp. 1-5.
  14. T. Hepp, M. Sharinghousen, P. Ehret, A. Schoenhals, and B. Gipp, "On-chain vs. off-chain storage for supply-and blockchain integration," it-Information Technology, vol. 60, pp. 283-291, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1515/itit-2018-0019
  15. T. S. L. Nguyen, G. Jourjon, M. Potop-Butucaru, and K. L. Thai, "Impact of network delays on Hyperledger Fabric," in IEEE INFOCOM 2019-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2019, pp. 222-227.
  16. E. Androulaki, A. Barger, V. Bortnikov, C. Cachin, K. Christidis, A. De Caro, et al., "Hyperledger fabric: a distributed operating system for permissioned blockchains," in Proceedings of the thirteenth EuroSys conference, 2018, pp. 1-15.
  17. H. Javaid, C. Hu, and G. Brebner, "Optimizing validation phase of hyperledger fabric," in 2019 IEEE 27th International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS), 2019, pp. 269-275.
  18. Y. Manevich, A. Barger, and Y. Tock, "Service discovery for hyperledger fabric," in Proceedings of the 12th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems, 2018, pp. 226-229.
  19. S. ah Khan, A. Jadhav, I. et Bharadwaj, M. Rooj, and S. Shiravale, "Blockchain and the Identity based Encryption Scheme for High Data Security," in 2020 Fourth International Conference on Computing Methodologies and Communication (ICCMC), 2020, pp. 1005-1008.
  20. C. Wang and X. Chu, "Performance characterization and bottleneck analysis of hyperledger fabric," in 2020 IEEE 40th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2020, pp. 1281-1286.
  21. L. Ismail and H. Materwala, "A review of blockchain architecture and consensus protocols: Use cases, challenges, and solutions," Symmetry, vol. 11, p. 1198, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/sym11101198
  22. M. Saad, J. Spaulding, L. Njilla, C. Kamhoua, S. Shetty, D. Nyang, et al., "Exploring the attack surface of blockchain: A systematic overview," arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.03487, 2019.
  23. L. S. Sankar, M. Sindhu, and M. Sethumadhavan, "Survey of consensus protocols on blockchain applications," in 2017 4th International Conference on Advanced Computing and Communication Systems (ICACCS), 2017, pp. 1-5.
  24. M. K. Mustafa and S. Waheed, "An E-Voting Framework with Enterprise Blockchain," in Advances in Distributed Computing and Machine Learning, ed: Springer, 2021, pp. 135-145.
  25. H. Honar Pajooh, M. Rashid, F. Alam, and S. Demidenko, "Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain for Securing the Edge Internet of Things," Sensors, vol. 21, p. 359, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020359
  26. J. Sousa, A. Bessani, and M. Vukolic, "A byzantine fault-tolerant ordering service for the hyperledger fabric blockchain platform," in 2018 48th annual IEEE/IFIP international conference on dependable systems and networks (DSN), 2018, pp. 51-58.
  27. H.-Y. Paik, X. Xu, H. D. Bandara, S. U. Lee, and S. K. Lo, "Analysis of Data Management in Blockchain-Based Systems: From Architecture to Governance," IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 186091-186107, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2961404
  28. V. Ribeiro, R. Holanda, A. Ramos, and J. J. Rodrigues, "Enhancing key management in LoRaWAN with permissioned blockchain," Sensors, vol. 20, p. 3068, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3390/s20113068
  29. P. Sajana, M. Sindhu, and M. Sethumadhavan, "On blockchain applications: hyperledger fabric and ethereum," International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 118, pp. 2965-2970, 2018.
  30. S. Brotsis, N. Kolokotronis, K. Limniotis, G. Bendiab, and S. Shiaeles, "On the security and privacy of hyperledger fabric: Challenges and open issues," in 2020 IEEE World Congress on Services (SERVICES), 2020, pp. 197-204.
  31. A. A. Monrat, O. Schelen, and K. Andersson, "A survey of blockchain from the perspectives of applications, challenges, and opportunities," IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 117134-117151, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2936094
  32. P. Zheng, Z. Zheng, X. Luo, X. Chen, and X. Liu, "A detailed and real-time performance monitoring framework for blockchain systems," in 2018 IEEE/ACM 40th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering in Practice Track (ICSE-SEIP), 2018, pp. 134-143.