Abstract
The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: Hideyuki Tokuda, Ph.D.), Kochi Health Science Center (KHSC, Director: Yasuhiro Shimada) and collaborating teams have developed a secure data backup system in an 800 km network connecting the data servers in Kochi, Osaka, Nagoya, Otemachi and Koganei, Japan, using secret sharing and secure communications technologies, and demonstrated distributed storage of medical records and prompt restoration of important items, such as prescription records and allergy information, via a satellite link within a time as short as 9 sec.
This technology would be useful for medical support in disaster situations as well as sharing and cross referencing medical records between various hospitals in ordinary situations.
The results will be presented in the session of quantum communication on December 16 in the EU-USA-Japan International Symposium on Quantum Technology 2019 held in Kyoto, Japan.
Background
In the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, many medical institutions were destroyed and data servers storing medical records were washed away by tsunami waters. It was then recognized that medical records should be backed up in remote places safely for such contingencies. In the case of emergency care after a disaster, medical examinations and treatment should be given to many people in a short time. During these times, there is a need to promptly restore a minimum of necessary items to profile a patient, such as prescription records and allergy information.
Medical records are highly confidential personal information. Therefore, the backup of medical records should be protected by appropriate security techniques. Furthermore, if the backup conforms to a common standardized data format, they can be shared and cross referenced by many medical institutions to prevent duplicated examination and excessive medication as well as to develop new medical technologies.
So far, no techniques have been available which satisfy all these requirements at once.
Achievements
We combined secret sharing and secure communications technologies to realize a secure data backup system and demonstrated distributed storage of medical records and prompt restoration of important items, such as prescription records and allergy information, via a satellite link. This system is referred to as the Healthcare Long-term INtegrity and Confidentiality protection System (H-LINCOS).
