A BLOCKCHAIN ENABLED TAMPER PROOF APPROACH FOR ENHANCED MEDICAL DATA INTEGRITY AND ACCESS CONTROL
Ch Aruna, T Varsha, C Shivakumar, Mankala Sreeja, B Badri Nath · Journal of Science Engineering Technology and Management Sciences · 2025
In modern healthcare systems, the centralized storage of electronic health records (EHRs) and associated documents presents significant vulnerabilities, including single points of failure, data tampering, and privacy breaches.This research proposes a decentralized framework that integrates blockchain technology with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) to securely manage doctor-patient appointment data, medical reports, prescriptions, and feedback.The system utilizes a permissioned Ethereum-style smart contract, named "Healthcare," to immutably store user profiles, appointment metadata, prescription references, and patient ratings.Sensitive medical files are encrypted using AES-CTR mode, with encryption keys derived via PBKDF2, and pinned to a local IPFS node to ensure both confidentiality and decentralized availability.Patients can register and log in, browse a list of doctors with on-chain average ratings, and book appointments by uploading encrypted medical reports.Later, they can securely download prescriptions in decrypted form.Doctors access the platform to view pending appointments, retrieve patient reports, issue encrypted prescriptions, and publish them on-chain.Patient feedback is also recorded as immutable blockchain transactions.To improve system responsiveness, an in-memory Python cache is synchronized with the blockchain, enabling fast read operations without repeatedly querying the chain.Experimental results demonstrate that the encryption, IPFS pinning, and decryption processes operate within acceptable performance thresholds.The proposed system enhances data integrity, transparency, and fault tolerance: no single authority can alter records without detection, and encrypted files remain retrievable even if specific nodes fail.By combining decentralized metadata storage with secure, off-chain encrypted file handling, this framework offers a robust, patient-centric solution to modern EHR management challenges.