MEXchange: Privacy-preserving Blockchain- based Framework for Health Information Exchange using Ring Signature and Stealth Address

Abstract

Recently, there have been lots of research to employ blockchain to health information exchange (HIE) for redeeming the weakness of previous HIE architecture. However, existing approaches do not consider the privacy issues caused by the data openness of blockchain. Through the existing methods, it is possible to identify participants who engage in blockchain-based HIE by analyzing linkable information (e.g., sender and receiver information recorded in transactions) on blockchain, which can reveal private information such as patients' hospital visit history. Therefore, the solution for the privacy problem needs to be devised to strengthen privacy and accelerate the realization of blockchain-based HIE. In this paper, we propose a MEXchange, blockchain-based health information exchange framework, that mitigates the privacy issues by utilizing ring signature and stealth address. In more detail, the MEXchange hides all of the linkable information on blockchain to reduce the possibility of identifying the participants. Through this research, we expect to accelerate the realization of HIE by alleviating privacy concerns.