10 May m-Health Blockchain System: Security in mHealth
| Approach or solution |
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| Students at IADE make a conceptual proposal of a Security system for mHealth based on Blockchain technology that would allow patients to greatly improve the control and ownership capabilities of their health data. The paper is also a comprehensive overview of the uses of Blockchain in Mobile Health Services and Applications.
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| Organisation or initiative |
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| Santos, J. A., Inácio, P. R., & Silva, B. M. (2019). Towards the Uses of Blockchain in Mobile Health Services and Applications: A Survey. arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.11013.
Instituto de Telecomunicac¸oes, Universidade da Beira Interior, Covilhã, Portugal and Universidade Europeia, IADE, Lisboa, Portugal |
| URL or reference |
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| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11013v1.pdf |
| Summary of the innovation |
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| “The blockchain protocol is, in its essence, a digital distributed ledger that is composed of digital transactions and shared through a network. This protocol is based on a Peer-to-Peer architecture, with every participant forming a node in the network. These participants store an identical copy of the ledger and then work together in the process of validating and certifying digital transactions, adding new transactions to the ledger. The process of adding transactions is based on evaluating the proposed transaction and submitting it to a vote. If the majority of the participants find the transaction to be valid, then it is added to the ledger, linking it with the previous transaction, forming a chain that cannot be altered without breaking its integrity. Each transaction that goes through the linking process is gathered in a block, which additionally contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, and is then linearly added in chronological order to the ledger. Changes to the ledger are replicated throughout the whole network and, because of this, every participant has a complete copy of the updated ledger. This also means that no single participant has the ability to easily attack the whole distributed network”. The format of the transactions is defined by the underlying network supporting the blockchain, while the data present in them is defined by the participants who create them. This data can be encrypted and digitally signed in order to add additional advantages to the system such as authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation. The transactions are added to the chain when a specific consensus mechanism is verified.”. “Because of the cryptographic hash built into each block of the blockchain, it is possible to know if any of the previous blocks were tampered with in any way. If they were, the correct version of the chain can be easily collected from another network participant, due to its distributed nature”
Traditional health systems scenario, where a patient has to request his data to a health service provider (HSP)
Health system with blockchain and m-Health integration
The conceptual proposal for an mHealth Blockchain system described in the paper is based upon the above figure. The integration would use open standards and open technologies and most importantly the patients would have the ability to access both their health data and the access records of their data through a mobile application. |
| Use cases supported |
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