Title: Information security protection for eHealth records using temporal hash signature

Authors: R. Charanya; R.A.K. Saravanaguru; M. Aramudhan

Addresses: School of Information Technology and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore Campus, Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Computer Science and Engineering, VIT University, Vellore Campus, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of IT, Perunthalivar Kamarajar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Karaikal, India

Abstract: Patient health record information management becomes an important and challenging task through the different practices followed by hospitals. Also, the risks associated with securing the data from cyber-attacks and data breaches become inevitable. Ransomware is the biggest cyber-attack in the history of National Health Service (NHS) which has affected nearly 100 countries worldwide in 2017. In the healthcare system, loss of sensitive data leads to embarrassment whereas loss of integrity leads to loss of the patient's life. Though many technical solutions exist to store the electronic health record (EHR) information in a secure way, it is not sufficient to satisfy the security requirements such as clear attributes for role-based access, common regulations that protect patient's privacy and specific guidelines to control the data. This paper provides a brief discussion on the existing security mechanisms with a proposal based on the temporal shadow in the cloud. The integrity of the patient's document is modelled with linked records and verified by temporal signature.

Keywords: eHealth; electronic health record; EHR; binary Merkle tree; temporal hash signature.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIE.2023.127233

International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise, 2023 Vol.10 No.1, pp.14 - 30

Received: 06 Nov 2018
Accepted: 17 Feb 2020
Published online: 30 Nov 2022 *