The PACE system: A P2P architecture for cloud based EHealth systems

Many healthcare facilities are currently investigating the possibility of utilising cloud computing platforms to store and share confidential patient records. However, before such a cloud-based system can be realised, there are still concerns over the safety of a patient’s identity while their medical information is stored with a third party. Thus, the challenge is to provide a highly accessible system as provided by the cloud with security for patient data as required by legislation. In this dissertation, we propose a novel approach to protecting a patient’s confidential information while still exploiting the benefits of the cloud platform. By extracting the identifying values from a patient’s records and storing them on the machines of the healthcare professionals, the remainder of the anonymised record can be stored on the cloud. These two subsets of data can then be recombined into the original medical record when required by a user. This dissertation presents the PACE system architecture which combines modern cloud and peer-to-peer technologies to manage healthcare records on the cloud and enable the sharing of confidential information between users. The anonymised data kept on the cloud is available to all users while the sensitive local data which can identify the records are stored and shared across a decentralised hybrid P2P network formed by the clinicians