Developing Data Integrity in an Electronic Health Record System using Blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (Case Study: COVID-19 Data)

The misuse of health data stored in the Electronic Health Record (EHR) system can be uncontrolled. For example, mishandling of privacy and data security related to Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19), containing patient diagnosis and vaccine certificate in Indonesia. We propose a system framework design by utilizing the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Blockchain technology to overcome this problem. The IPFS environment supports a large data storage with a distributed network powered by Ethereum blockchain. The combination of this technology allows data stored in the EHR to be secure and available at any time. All data are secured with a blockchain cryptographic algorithm and can only be accessed using a user's private key. System testing evaluates the mechanism and process of storing and accessing data from 346 computers connected to the IPFS network and Blockchain by considering several parameters, such as gas unit, CPU load, network latency, and bandwidth used. The obtained results show that 135205 gas units are used in each transaction based on the tests. The average execution speed ranges from 12.98 to 14.08 GHz, 26 KB/s is used for incoming, and 4 KB/s is for outgoing bandwidth. Our contribution is in designing a blockchain-based decentralized EHR system by maximizing the use of private keys as an access right to maintain the integrity of COVID-19 diagnosis and certificate data. We also provide alternative storage using a distributed IPFS to maintain data availability at all times as a solution to the problem of traditional cloud storage, which often ignores data availability.