Healthcare information exchange using blockchain technology

Abstract

Current trend in health-care industry is to shift its data on the cloud, to increase availability of Electronic Health Records (EHR) e.g. Patient’s medical history in real time, which will allow sharing of EHR with ease. However, this conventional cloud-based data sharing environment has data security and privacy issues. This paper proposes a distributed solution based on blockchain technology for trusted Health Information Exchange (HIE). In addition to exchange of EHR between patient and doctor, the proposed system is also used in other aspects of healthcare such as improving the insurance claim and making data available for research organizations. Medical data is very sensitive, in both social as well as legal aspects, so permissioned block-chain such as Hyperledger Fabric is used to retain the necessary privacy required in the proposed system. As, this is highly permissioned network where the owner of the network i.e. patient holds all the access rights, so in case of emergency situations the proposed system has a Backup Access System which will allow healthcare professionals to access partial EHR and this backup access is provided by using wearable IOT device.