Verifiable and Boolean keyword searchable attribute-based signcryption for electronic medical record storage and retrieval in cloud computing environment

Cloud-based electronic medical record (EMR) management system is an emerging paradigm that enables EMR owners to store and share their EMRs with intended group of healthcare personnel. And, it allows EMR users to retrieve desired records from the cloud when require. However, authentic EMR sharing and searching with security has been a challenging problem. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a searchable attribute-based signcryption for EMR storage and retrieval in cloud computing environment, termed as MediCare, that supports simultaneously the functionalities: fine-grained access control over encrypted EMRs, EMR owner authenticity and anonymity, Boolean formula-based keyword search over encrypted EMRs, keyword privacy, constant decryption cost for EMR users, non-interactive search results verification, and provably secure . We employ attribute-based framework in designing MediCare. Only authorized EMR owners can anonymously upload EMRs to the cloud, and an EMR user can search over encrypted EMRs using Boolean formula keyword policy. MediCare enables an EMR user to verify the correctness of the search results efficiently without interacting with any authority. We define more general security definitions of MediCare and provide rigorous security analysis. We also conduct experiments to evaluate MediCare’s performance.