Towards Secure Interoperability between Heterogeneous Blockchains using Smart Contracts

Achieving data confidentiality and privacy while maintaining secure access is essential in various fields, including in the medical sector. Implementing a blockchain-based technol-ogy to secure sensitive data ensures that the users own their data and have control over who can access it. While blockchain technology is still in its infancy, it is the cutting-edge of research in many industries and institutions. The decentralized nature of blockchain technology and the presence of smart contracts in Ethereum are two major features that can be utilized to create a novel data sharing and access system that is secure, flexible, and more reliable. In this paper, we investigate the use of smart contracts between heterogeneous blockchains for the purpose of achieving secure interoperability for data sharing and access control. As a proof of concept, we propose and implement a record management system for healthcare data, where access to healthcare providers’ databases is managed through a private blockchain, only available to healthcare providers, and patients access their medical records through a public blockchain. Addi-tionally, we develop a set of smart contracts for each blockchain to control access, manage storage, and enable interoperability between the two blockchains.

@article{Dagher2018,
  title     = {Towards Secure Interoperability between Heterogeneous Blockchains using Smart Contracts},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {9},
  number    = {1},
  year      = {2018},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Gaby G. Dagher and Chandra L. Adhikari and Tyler Enderson},
  doi       = {10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090108},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/SpecialIssue.2018.090108}
}