Taking control of your own pervasive mHealth Data: A Proof of Concept using a configurable Blockchain and mHealth application on iOS and Android devices (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Background: Blockchains offer a promising new distributed technology to address the challenges of data standardization, system interoperability, security, privacy, and accessibility for all data. However, integrating pervasive computing with blockchain’s ability to store privacy-protected mHealth data while providing HIPAA compliance is a challenge. Patients use a multitude of devices, apps, and services to collect and store mHealth data. Before the advent of blockchains, providing anonymized privacy controlled single point of access for different data sources for each user was a challenging problem. We present the design of an IoT-based configurable blockchain with different mHealth applications on iOS and Android collecting the same user’s data. We discuss the advantages of using such a blockchain architecture and demonstrate two things – the ease with which users can retain full control of their pervasive mHealth data and the ease with which HIPAA compliance can be accomplished by provider(s) who choose to access user data. We also allude to the future of shareable and tradeable data with our paper. OBJECTIVE Objective: The purpose of this paper is to design, evaluate and test IoT-based mHealth data using wearable devices using an efficient configurable blockchain designed and implemented ground up to store such data. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the privacy-preserving and HIPAA-compliant nature of pervasive computing-based personalized healthcare systems that give users total control of their own data. METHODS Methods: This paper followed the methodical design science approach adapted in information systems wherein we evaluate prior designs, propose enhancements with a Blockchain design pattern published by the same author(s), and use the design to support IoT transactions. We prototype both the blockchain and the IoT-based mHealth applications in different devices and test all use cases that formed the design goals for such a system. Specifically, we validate the design goals for our system using the HIPAA checklist for businesses and prove compliance of our architecture for mHealth data on pervasive computing devices. RESULTS Results: Blockchain-based personalized healthcare systems provide several advantages over traditional systems. They support the following features: provide and support extreme privacy protection, ability to share personalized data, provide the ability to delete data upon request, and support the ability to work on data. CONCLUSIONS Conclusions: We conclude that blockchain(s) and specifically the CHASM architecture presented in this paper, with configurable module(s) and a Software as a service Model provide many advantages for patients using pervasive devices that store mHealth data on the blockchain. Among them, is the ability to store, retrieve and modify one(s) generated healthcare data with a single private key across devices. This data is transparent and stored perennially and provides patients the privacy and pseudo-anonymity in addition to very strong encryption for data access. Firms and Device manufacturers would be benefited from such an approach wherein they relinquish user data control, while giving users the ability to select and offer their own mHealth data on data marketplaces. We show that such an architecture complies with the stringent requirements of HIPAA for patient data access.