A Secure Blockchain-Assisted Access Control Scheme for Smart Healthcare System in Fog Computing

IoT-based smart healthcare system (SHS) allows doctors to monitor and diagnose patients remotely, which can greatly ease overcrowding in the hospitals and disequilibrium of medical resources, especially during the rage of COVID-19. However, the SHS generates enormous data which contains sensitive personal information. To protect patients’ privacy, we propose a secure blockchain (BC)-assisted access control scheme for SHS in fog computing. All the operations of users are recorded on the BC by smart contract in order to ensure transparency and reliability of the system. We present a BC-assisted multiauthority attribute-based encryption (MA-ABE) scheme with keyword search to ensure the confidentiality of the data, avoid single point of failure and implement fine-grained access control of the system. IoT devices are limited in resources, therefore it is not practical to apply the BC-assisted MA-ABE scheme directly. To reduce the burdens of IoT devices, We outsource most of the computational tasks to fog nodes. Finally, the security and performance analysis demonstrate that the proposed system is reliable, practical, and efficient.