Verified Access to EHR over Blockchain and IPFS with Lit Protocol Encryption

Abstract

The growing digitization of medical information has raised the possibility of medical records being stolen or manipulated in addition to their convenience. To overcome this, our work suggests a cutting-edge EHR sharing system that uses Blockchain and decentralized storage to safely and conveniently store and exchange medical records. Our work required curating patients’ medical records to test and validate our system's working. Data from sources like MIMIC-III are considered to curate and populate the EHRs with all possible types of medical data. Our proposed EHR system is built on top of the Ethereum Blockchain, with IPFS for decentralized storage of the EHR, and MetaMask for facilitating transactions securely. IPFS system stores content using a content addressable mechanism by default, allowing anyone with a file’s CID to access it. To secure EHRs on the IPFS network, we encrypt EHRs using the Lit protocol before being stored in the IPFS network. It allows authorized users to retrieve the EHRs and decrypt them without introducing additional latency to the blockchain system. Additionally, we have implemented an OTP mechanism to authenticate a patient's access to the patient portal before accessing the EHRs for added security. The patient has the sole authority to grant and revoke access to their EHRs to a doctor. The implementation proves good for the secured sharing of EHR with less overheads.