A Secure System For Pervasive Social Network-Based Healthcare

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 4; pp. 9239 - 9250
• Main Authors: Zhang, Jie, Xue, Nian, Huang, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2016; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Blockchain; Body area networks; Computer networks; Cryptography; e-health; Electronic devices; Health care; healthcare; human body channels; IEEE 802.15 Standard; IEEE 802.15.6; Medical services; Mobile computing; Mobile handsets; Nodes; Protocol; Protocol (computers); Protocols; Security; Social networks; Wireless communication
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2645904

Modern technologies of mobile computing and wireless sensing prompt the concept of pervasive social network (PSN)-based healthcare. To realize the concept, the core problem is how a PSN node can securely share health data with other nodes in the network. In this paper, we propose a secure system for PSN-based healthcare. Two protocols are designed for the system. The first one is an improved version of the IEEE 802.15.6 display authenticated association. It establishes secure links with unbalanced computational requirements for mobile devices and resource-limited sensor nodes. The second protocol uses blockchain technique to share health data among PSN nodes. We realize a protocol suite to study protocol runtime and other factors. In addition, human body channels are proposed for PSN nodes in some use cases. The proposed system illustrates a potential method of using blockchain for PSN-based applications.