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Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research

Date Submitted: Jan 24, 2019
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 30, 2019 - Feb 25, 2019
Date Accepted: Apr 27, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Secure and Scalable mHealth Data Management Using Blockchain Combined With Client Hashchain: System Design and Validation

Motohashi T, Hirano T, Okumura K, Kashiyama M, Ichikawa D, Ueno T

Secure and Scalable mHealth Data Management Using Blockchain Combined With Client Hashchain: System Design and Validation

J Med Internet Res 2019;21(5):e13385

DOI: 10.2196/13385

PMID: 31099337

PMCID: 6542324

Secure and scalable mHealth data management using blockchain combined with client hashchain

  • Tomomitsu Motohashi; 
  • Tomonobu Hirano; 
  • Kosuke Okumura; 
  • Makiko Kashiyama; 
  • Daisuke Ichikawa; 
  • Taro Ueno

ABSTRACT

Background:

Blockchain is emerging as an innovative technology for secure data management in many areas, including medical practice. A distributed blockchain network is tolerant against network fault and the registered data are resistant to tampering and revision. The technology has a high affinity with digital medicine like mobile health (mHealth) and provides reliability to the medical data without labor intensive third party contributions. On the other hand, the reliability of the medical data is not insured before registration to the blockchain network. Furthermore, there are issues with regard to how the client mobile devices should be dealt with and authenticated in the blockchain network in order to avoid impersonation.

Objective:

The aim of the study was to design and validate the system, which enables the compatibility of the security and the scalability of the medical data using blockchain technology.

Methods:

We designed the mHealth system, which sends medical data to the blockchain network via relay servers. The architecture provides scalability and convenience of operation of the system. In order to ensure the reliability of the data from client mobile devices, hash values with chain structure (client hashchain) were calculated in the client devices and the results were registered on the blockchain network.

Results:

The system was applied and deployed in mHealth for insomnia treatment. Clinical trials for mHealth were conducted with insomnia patients. Medical data of the recruited patients were successfully registered with the blockchain network via relay servers along with the hashchain calculated on the client mobile devices. The correctness of the data was validated by identifying illegal data, which were made by simulating fraudulent access.

Conclusions:

Our proposed mHealth system, blockchain combined with client hashchain, ensures compatibility of security and scalability in the data management of medical practice in mHealth.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Motohashi T, Hirano T, Okumura K, Kashiyama M, Ichikawa D, Ueno T

Secure and Scalable mHealth Data Management Using Blockchain Combined With Client Hashchain: System Design and Validation

J Med Internet Res 2019;21(5):e13385

DOI: 10.2196/13385

PMID: 31099337

PMCID: 6542324

Per the author's request the PDF is not available.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.