Facilitating the Secured Transfer of EHRs through the Implementation of Hybrid Encryption Methods over a Solid Blockchain-Based Framework

Abstract

There are serious issues with security, confidentiality, and compatibility with the "Electronic-Health Records (EHRs)" information that is kept and exchanged in distributed computing environments. A significantly more protected, confidential, and compatible system with emerging and distributed technology, brings us to the rise of "Block-Chain (BC)" innovation as an alternative. By allowing the Patient "Data-Owner (DO)" to exchange their secure information through the network, data encryption in a BC-based distributed storage framework assures security. The existing research provides several systems, including "Digital-Signature," "Homomorphic-Encryption," and multiple encryption algorithms, allowing the safe transmission of EHRs across a BC context. When it comes to the secure transmission of data, the "Symmetric-Encryption (SE)" and "Asymmetric-Encryption (AE)" methods are crucial. Intending to keep EHR data secure and user anonymity unaffected, these methods are vital in the healthcare BC network. A "Privacy-Preserving (PP)" based "Hybrid-Encryption (HE)" which incorporates both SE and AE has been proposed in the present research for use in BC-based healthcare networks for encryption of EHR data and restricting anonymity reading and retrieving at the same time. The suggested BC-HE architecture employs two methods for encrypting and decrypting EHR information and keys: SE utilizing the AES method and AE utilizing the RSA method. This allows for the smooth PP operation of the system in a public domain. All of the nodes within the network will get the newly created keys when the proposed model generates the Symmetric-Key and Public-Key pairs. In addition to protecting the confidentiality of BC's DOs, this BC-HE method will make it easier for authorized clients to share data between departments and organizations. After comparing the proposed BC-HE framework with the existing BC-LS framework utilizing the measurements of "Security Ratio," "Encryption Time," and "Decryption Time," the results demonstrate that the proposed BC-HE offers a higher level of security.