Block-Privacy: Privacy Preserving Smart Healthcare Framework: Leveraging Blockchain and Functional Encryption

Early adoption of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) are enhancing the healthcare sector in all directions. Though the advances are adding advantages to the existing systems, the security and privacy of medical data remain a challenge. The increase in IoMT and mobile healthcare devices presence on untrusted networks can make the situation more complicated for healthcare system users. Moreover, they are pushing critical data to centralized locations like cloud, where the patient lacking control on his data. In this regard, a secure IoT framework is desirable which is capable of preserving the integrity and confidentiality of the medical data. Due to this, we proposed a novel architecture which leverages blockchain, IPFS, zero-knowledge protocols, and functional encryption technologies to provide decentralised healthcare system privacy and security. The proposed system helps the healthcare system administrators maintain data confidentiality, availability, integrity, and transparency over an untrusted peer-to-peer network without any human interference. Moreover, the system eliminates the requirement for a centralised server for functional encryption operations using hybrid computing paradigms. Finally, the proposed system suggests a novel mechanism to minimise the latency in data sharing over the network without compromising data security and privacy. To describe the working principle of this architecture a logical analysis is carried out which shows that the system is capable of providing the desired security and privacy.