Secure Cloud EHR with Semantic Access Control, Searchable Encryption and Attribute Revocation

Abstract

To ensure a secure Cloud-based Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, we need to encrypt data and impose field-level access control to prevent malicious usage. Since the attributes of the Users will change with time, the encryption policies adopted may also vary. For large EHR systems, it is often necessary to search through the encrypted data in realtime and perform client-side computations without decrypting all patient records. This paper describes our novel cloud-based EHR system that uses Attribute Based Encryption (ABE) combined with Semantic Web technologies to facilitate differential access to an EHR, thereby ensuring only Users with valid attributes can access a particular field of the EHR. The system also includes searchable encryption using keyword index and search trapdoor, which allows querying EHR fields without decrypting the entire patient record. The attribute revocation feature is efficiently managed in our EHR by delegating the revision of the secret key and ciphertext to the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). Our methodology incorporates advanced security features that eliminate malicious use of EHR data and contributes significantly towards ensuring secure digital health systems on the Cloud.