Hyperledger Healthchain: Patient-Centric IPFS-Based Storage of Health Records

TLDR

Blockchain‑based electronic health systems face growth barriers due to privacy, confidentiality, security concerns and the high resource demands of storing large data. The study aims to develop cybersecurity measurement approaches to safeguard patient information in healthcare by introducing a patient‑centric healthcare data management (PCHDM) system. PCHDM stores health‑record hashes on a Hyperledger Fabric chain while encrypting actual data on IPFS, uses a container‑hosted smart contract with Byzantine Fault Tolerance to enforce patient preferences, and evaluates ledger performance with Hyperledger Caliper benchmarks for latency, resource use, and throughput. The model provides stakeholders with increased confidence in collaborating and sharing their health records.

Abstract

Blockchain-based electronic health system growth is hindered by privacy, confidentiality, and security. By protecting against them, this research aims to develop cybersecurity measurement approaches to ensure the security and privacy of patient information using blockchain technology in healthcare. Blockchains need huge resources to store big data. This paper presents an innovative solution, namely patient-centric healthcare data management (PCHDM). It comprises the following: (i) in an on-chain health record database, hashes of health records are stored as health record chains in Hyperledger fabric, and (ii) off-chain solutions that encrypt actual health data and store it securely over the interplanetary file system (IPFS) which is the decentralized cloud storage system that ensures scalability, confidentiality, and resolves the problem of blockchain data storage. A security smart contract hosted through container technology with Byzantine Fault Tolerance consensus ensures patient privacy by verifying patient preferences before sharing health records. The Distributed Ledger technology performance is tested under hyper ledger caliper benchmarks in terms of transaction latency, resource utilization, and transaction per second. The model provides stakeholders with increased confidence in collaborating and sharing their health records.