A novel personal health record system for handling emergency situations

Personal health record (PHR) becomes a popular research topic nowadays. Many research works have proposed several concepts in managing and organizing a PHR. However, there are several uncertain issues left such as the role of a PHR in emergency situations. In this paper, a solution to handle a PHR information management in emergency situations is proposed. Because a PHR is controlled by its owner, the critical challenge in handling the PHR in emergency situations is how emergency staffs can access PHR information, even when the PHR owner is unable to give his/her consent. The proposed scheme allows each PHR to be classified into several categories. Each category presents a different restriction. And, the emergency staffs can access each category according to the policy defined by the PHR owner. The threshold cryptosystem is adapted in this work to allow the selected set of PHR-owner-delegates to grant permission to the emergency staffs when the PHR owner is unconscious.