Storage and Proximity Management for Centralized Personal Health Records Using an IPFS-Based Optimization Algorithm

• Published in: Journal of circuits, systems, and computers Vol. 31; no. 1
• Main Authors: Mubashar, Amna, Asghar, Kalsoom, Javed, Abdul Rehman, Rizwan, Muhammad, Srivastava, Gautam, Gadekallu, Thippa Reddy, Wang, Dong, Shabbir, Maryam
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company 15.01.2022; World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd
• Subjects: Algorithms; Availability; Cryptography; Fault tolerance; Optimization; Personal health; Security; Interplanetary file systems; Internet of Things (IoT); next generation networks; personal health record
• ISSN: 0218-1266; 1793-6454
• DOI: 10.1142/S0218126622500104

Centralized Personal Health Records (PHR) are mutable with compromised security as it may lead to a single point of failure. Confidentiality, protection and security are the common issues in clinical record frameworks. Specific security and protection schemes are being used to secure clinical records. Accordingly, using the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized PHR can be maintained to allow patients to access their records without delay. Moreover, a Kademlia-based distributed hash table provides fault tolerance and enables patients to keep track of their medical history. However, a significant issue in IPFS is data availability. It is only available on the web until users or hosts of the network request each peer, later it leads to a permanent loss of data. We propose an architecture that aims to provide faster retrieval and constant PHR availability using Blockchain and IPFS. The results show that an optimal node is selected in each iteration amongst all the available adjacent nodes.