Dual blockchain-based data sharing mechanism with privacy protection for medical internet of things

• Published in: Heliyon Vol. 10; no. 1; p. e23575
• Main Authors: Liu, Linchen, Liu, Ruyan, Lv, Zhiying, Huang, Ding, Liu, Xing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 15.01.2024; Elsevier
• Subjects: Blockchain; Medical data sharing; Medical internet of things; Privacy protection; Medical data sharing; Privacy protection; Medical internet of things; Blockchain
• ISSN: 2405-8440; 2405-8440
• DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e23575

In the period of big data, the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) serves as a critical technology for modern medical data collection. Through medical devices and sensors, it enables real-time collection of a large amount of patients' physiological parameters and health data. However, these data are often generated in a high-speed, large-scale, and diverse manner, requiring integration with traditional medical systems, which further exacerbates the phenomenon of scattered and heterogeneous medical data. Additionally, the privacy and security requirements for the devices and sensor data involved in the MIoT are more stringent. Therefore, when designing a medical data sharing mechanism, the data privacy protection capability of the mechanism must be fully considered. This paper proposes an alliance chain medical data sharing mechanism based on a dual-chain structure to achieve secure sharing of medical data among entities such as medical institutions, research institutions, and cloud privacy centers, and at the same time provide privacy protection functions to achieve a balanced combination of privacy protection capability and data accessibility of medical data. First, a knowledge technology based on ciphertext policy attribute encryption with zero-knowledge concise non-interactive argumentation is used, combined with the data sharing structure of the federation chain, to ensure the integrity and privacy-protecting capability of medical data. Second, the approach employs certificate-based signing and proxy re-encryption technology, ensuring that entities can decrypt and verify medical data at the cloud privacy center using this methodology, consequently addressing the confidentiality concerns surrounding medical data. Third, an efficient and secure key identity-based encryption protocol is used to ensure the legitimacy of user identity and improve the security of medical data. Finally, the theoretical and practical performance analysis proves that the mechanism is feasible and efficient compared with other existing mechanisms.