Privacy-Aware E-Health Data Sharing via Decentralized Blockchain System

Abstract

With the growing sensitivity of personal health information (PHI), ensuring secure and privacy-preserving mechanisms for data exchange has become a critical challenge. Blockchain technology, with its inherent properties of immutability, decentralization, and transparency, shows significant promise in reshaping healthcare data management. Unlike existing single-layer approaches, this paper presents a decentralized blockchain-based multi-layer architecture with trap-door based searchable encryption, designed to enable secure, scalable, and privacy-aware sharing of electronic health records (EHR), consisting of data generation, storage, service, and super service layers. It leverages private and consortium blockchains to preserve data confidentiality and enforce access control through smart contracts. Trapdoor-based searchable encryption enables privacy-preserving queries on encrypted records, ensuring sensitive PHI remains protected yet discoverable by authorized users. Experimental evaluation demonstrates improved access efficiency, reduced cost, and compliance with data privacy regulations. This work highlights blockchain’s transformative role in healthcare by ensuring trust, security, and accessibility.