DAAC: Digital asset access control in a unified blockchain based e-health system

The use of the Internet of Things and modern technologies has boosted the expansion of e-health solutions significantly and allowed access to better health services and remote monitoring of patients. Every service provider usually implements its information system to manage and access patient data for its unique purpose. Hence, the interoperability among independent e-health service providers is still a major challenge. From the structure of stored data to its large volume, the design of each such big data system varies, hence the cooperation among different e-health systems is almost impossible. In addition to this, the security and privacy of patient information is a challenging task. Building a unified solution for all creates significant business and economic issues. In this article, we present a solution to migrate existing e-health systems to a unified Blockchain-based model, where access to large scale medical data of patients can be achieved seamlessly by any service provider. A core blockchain network connects individual & independent e-health systems without requiring them to modify their internal processes. Access to patient data in the form of digital assets stored in off-chain storage is controlled through patient-centric channels and policy transactions. Through emulation, we show that the proposed solution can interconnect different e-health systems efficiently.