Block-Based Access Control for Blockchain-Based Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) Query in eHealth

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an access control solution for exchanging Blockchain-based Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) called BBACS (Block-based Access Control Scheme) that includes an access model and an access scheme. Unlike the existing Blockchain-oriented access schemes for EMRs, our access model can omit the agent layer (gateway) in order to authorise users' access with block level granularity, whilst maintaining compatibility with the underlying Blockchain data structure. Furthermore, the authorisation, encryption, and decryption algorithms presented in BBACS dispense with the need to use a public key infrastructure (PKI) and hence cut down the cost of network construction and improve the computational performance. We validated the efficiency (time cost) of local computation and data transmission (over Wi-Fi) for BBACS using a simulation of BBACS against another Blockchain-oriented access control scheme for EMRs called HDG as our baseline. To the best of our knowledge, BBACS is the first Blockchain-oriented access control solution without the need for an agent (or gateway) design, supporting granular authorisation (block level), that has been proposed for secure EMRs management in eHealth.