Using Blockchain for Electronic Health Records

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 7; pp. 147782 - 147795
• Main Authors: Shahnaz, Ayesha, Qamar, Usman, Khalid, Ayesha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: and scalability; Blockchain; Cryptography; decentralization; Electronic health records; Electronic medical records; Health care; Health care industry; health records; Hospitals; Peer-to-peer computing; Security
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2946373

Blockchain have been an interesting research area for a long time and the benefits it provides have been used by a number of various industries. Similarly, the healthcare sector stands to benefit immensely from the blockchain technology due to security, privacy, confidentiality and decentralization. Nevertheless, the Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems face problems regarding data security, integrity and management. In this paper, we discuss how the blockchain technology can be used to transform the EHR systems and could be a solution of these issues. We present a framework that could be used for the implementation of blockchain technology in healthcare sector for EHR. The aim of our proposed framework is firstly to implement blockchain technology for EHR and secondly to provide secure storage of electronic records by defining granular access rules for the users of the proposed framework. Moreover, this framework also discusses the scalability problem faced by the blockchain technology in general via use of off-chain storage of the records. This framework provides the EHR system with the benefits of having a scalable, secure and integral blockchain-based solution.