Efficient personal-health-records sharing in internet of medical things using searchable symmetric encryption, blockchain, and IPFS

Abstract

Secure storage and sharing of Personal Health Records (PHRs) in Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is one of the significant challenges in the healthcare ecosystem. Due to the high value of personal health information, PHRs are one of the favourite targets of cyber attackers worldwide. Over the years, many solutions have been proposed; however, most solutions are inefficient for practical applications. For instance, several existing schemes rely on the bilinear pairings, which incur high computational costs. To mitigate these issues, we propose a novel PHR-sharing scheme that is dynamic, efficient, and practical. Specifically, we combine searchable symmetric encryption, blockchain technology and a decentralized storage system, known as Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) to guarantee confidentiality of PHRs, verifiability of search results, and forward security. Moreover, we provide formal security proofs for the proposed scheme. Finally, we have conducted extensive test-bed experiments and the results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can be used in practical scenarios related to IoMT environment.