Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

SynCare: An Innovative Remote Patient Monitoring System Secured by Cryptography and Blockchain

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Privacy and Identity Management. Between Data Protection and Security (Privacy and Identity 2021)

Part of the book series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology ((IFIPAICT,volume 644))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 660 Accesses

Abstract

Remote patient monitoring involves the collection of patient-generated health data, using sensors/devices and mobile apps, to allow observation of patient’s health status, also outside healthcare environments. The challenge in this field is to facilitate patient-centric data storing, sharing, and retrieving, with high attention to personal, sensitive data privacy and protection. This study presents SynCare, a patient-centered ecosystem developed by LifeCharger, for secure health-related data recording and remote patient monitoring. SynCare has been developed with the aim of making up a strong loop between patients, healthcare professionals and informal caregivers, building up secure channels for data sharing and supporting the patients in the management of their own health and related data. The system includes: 1) a mobile app for the patient, offering different features supporting the therapy and allowing the management of consents to share key data with the healthcare professionals and/or caregivers, 2) a database on Cloud, storing all the encrypted, sensitive health-data, 3) public Ethereum blockchain to validate the data sharing consents, 4) a clinical dashboard developed as a web application whose main purpose is to allow healthcare professional to display and analyze the data collected by the patient through the mobile app. The SynCare ecosystem implements a software developed by LiberActa srl to asynchronously load the anonymous consent data on the Ethereum public blockchain, decoupling the user experience from the blockchain interaction, which can be slow, without compromising the data security.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Lin, C., et al.: Clinical informatics accelerates health system adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic: examples from Colorado. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 27, 1955–1963 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Perrone, G., Zerbo, S., Bilotta, C., Malta, G., Argo, A.: Telemedicine during Covid-19 pandemic: advantage or critical issue? Med. Leg. 88, 76–77 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. World Health Organization: Responding to community spread of COVID-19: interim guidance, 7 March 2020 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Bassan, S.: Data privacy considerations for telehealth consumers amid COVID-19. J. Law Biosci. 7, Isaa075 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Martinez-Martin, N., et al.: Ethics of digital mental health during COVID-19: crisis and opportunities. JMIR Mental Health. 7, e237-76 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dwyer, G.P.: The economics of bitcoin and similar private digital currencies. J. Financ. Stab. 17, 81–91 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Böhme, R., Christin, N., Edelman, B., Moore, T.: Bitcoin: economics, technology, and governance. J. Econ. Perspect. 29, 213–238 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Agbo, C.C., Mahmoud, Q.H., Eklund, J.M.: Blockchain technology in healthcare: a systematic review. In: Healthcare, vol. 7. no. 2, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (2019)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Mettler, M.: Blockchain technology in healthcare: the revolution starts here. In: 2016 IEEE 18th International Conference on e-health Networking, Applications and Services (Healthcom), pp. 1–3 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Azaria, A., Ekblaw, A., Vieira, T., Lippman, A.: MedRec: using blockchain for medical data access and permission management. In: 2016 2nd International Conference on Open and Big Data (OBD), pp. 25–30 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Esposito, C., De Santis, A., Tortora, G., Chang, H., Choo, K.R.: Blockchain: a panacea for healthcare cloud-based data security and privacy? IEEE Cloud Comput. 5, 31–37 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kaur, H., Alam, M.A., Jameel, R., Mourya, A.K., Chang, V.: A proposed solution and future direction for blockchain-based heterogeneous medicare data in cloud environment. J. Med. Syst. 42(8), 1–11 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-1007-5

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Xia, Q., Sifah, E.B., Smahi, A., Amofa, S., Zhang, X.: BBDS: blockchain-based data sharing for electronic medical records in cloud environments. Information 8, 44 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Milojkovic, M.: Privacy-Preserving Framework for Access Control and Interoperability of Electronic Health Records using Blockchain Technology (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Dagher, G.G., Mohler, J., Milojkovic, M., Marella, P.B.: Ancile: privacy-preserving framework for access control and interoperability of electronic health records using blockchain technology. Sustain. Cities Soc. 39, 283–297 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Hussein, A.F., et al.: A medical records managing and securing blockchain based system supported by a genetic algorithm and discrete wavelet transform. Cogn. Syst. Res. 52, 1–11 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Li, H., Zhu, L., Shen, M., Gao, F., Tao, X., Liu, S.: Blockchain-based data preservation system for medical data. J. Med. Syst. 42(8), 1–13 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-0997-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Allanson, J., Fairclough, S.H.: A research agenda for physiological computing. Interact Comput 16, 857–878 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Wang, H., Song, Y.: Secure cloud-based EHR system using attribute-based cryptosystem and blockchain. J. Med. Syst. 42, 1–9 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Zhao, H., Bai, P., Peng, Y., Xu, R.: Efficient key management scheme for health blockchain. CAAI Trans. Intell. Technol. 3, 114–118 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Zhao, H., Zhang, Y., Peng, Y., Xu, R.: lightweight backup and efficient recovery scheme for health blockchain keys. In: 2017 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized System (ISADS), pp. 229–234 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Zhang, X., Poslad, S.: Blockchain support for flexible queries with granular access control to electronic medical records (EMR). In: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC); pp. 1–6 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Zhang, A., Lin, X.: Towards secure and privacy-preserving data sharing in e-health systems via consortium blockchain. J. Med. Syst. 42, 1–18 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Omar, A.A., Rahman, M.S., Basu, A., Kiyomoto, S.: Medibchain: a blockchain based privacy preserving platform for healthcare data. In: Wang, G., Atiquzzaman, M., Yan, Z., Choo, K.-K.R. (eds.) SpaCCS. LNCS, vol. 10658, pp. 534–543. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72395-2_49

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Yue, X., Wang, H., Jin, D., Li, M., Jiang, W.: Healthcare data gateways: found healthcare intelligence on blockchain with novel privacy risk control. J. Med. Syst. 40(10), 1–8 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0574-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Healthbank Homepage. https://www.healthbank.coop. Accessed 22 July 2021

  28. Nicholm, P.B.: Blockchain Applications for Healthcare. https://www.cio.com/article/3042603/blockchain-applications-for-healthcare.html. Accessed 22 July 2021

  29. Griggs, K.N., Ossipova, O., Kohlios, C.P., Baccarini, A.N., Howson, E.A., Hayajneh, T.: Healthcare blockchain system using smart contracts for secure automated remote patient monitoring. J. Med. Syst. 42, 1–7 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Liang, X., Zhao, J., Shetty, S., Liu, J., Li, D.: Integrating blockchain for data sharing and collaboration in mobile healthcare applications. In: 2017 IEEE 28th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), pp. 1–5 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Saravanan, M., Shubha, R., Marks, A.M., Iyer, V.: SMEAD: a secured mobile enabled assisting device for diabetics monitoring. In: 2017 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems (ANTS), pp. 1–6 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Ichikawa, D., Kashiyama, M., Ueno, T.: Tamper-resistant mobile health using blockchain technology. JMIR mHealth uHealth. 5, e111 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Uddin, M.A., Stranieri, A., Gondal, I., Balasubramanian, V.: Continuous patient monitoring with a patient centric agent: a block architecture. IEEE Access 6, 32700–32726 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LifeCharger Srl, Via Pico della Mirandola, 8/B, 20151, Milan, Italy

    Claudio Pighini, Andrea G. Migliavacca, Maria R. Guarneri & Ambra Cesareo

  2. LiberActa Srl, Via Aurelio Saffi 21, 20123, Milan, Italy

    Alessio Vezzoni, Simone Mainini & Alessandro Montanari

  3. Dipartimento Di Elettronica, Informazione E Bioingegneria, Politecnico Di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Claudio Pighini & Enrico G. Caiani

  4. Dipartimento Di Design, Politecnico Di Milano, 20133, Milan, Italy

    Maria R. Guarneri

Authors
  1. Claudio Pighini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alessio Vezzoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Simone Mainini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Andrea G. Migliavacca
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Alessandro Montanari
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Maria R. Guarneri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Enrico G. Caiani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Ambra Cesareo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ambra Cesareo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Michael Friedewald

  2. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Stephan Krenn

  3. Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Wolfenbüttel, Germany

    Ina Schiering

  4. University of Münster, Münster, Germany

    Stefan Schiffner

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Pighini, C. et al. (2022). SynCare: An Innovative Remote Patient Monitoring System Secured by Cryptography and Blockchain. In: Friedewald, M., Krenn, S., Schiering, I., Schiffner, S. (eds) Privacy and Identity Management. Between Data Protection and Security. Privacy and Identity 2021. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 644. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99100-5_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99100-5_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-99099-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-99100-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Societies and partnerships