A Blockchain based Electronic Medical Health Records Framework using Smart Contracts

Abstract

The common issues in medical services within the country are mostly associated with doctors' referral process, data transfer between health institutions, and portals for patients to access their medical information. Specific issues arise, such as sharing health Records across institutes or hospitals, problems with misuse of data once shared, no security, etc. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) Framework on Blockchain addresses those issues, resulting from a collaboration of all stakeholders involved. This paper explores the likelihood of representing medical records to make sure data privacy, data accessibility, and data interoperability for the healthcare-specific scenario. Data privacy refers to affording protection to ensure data is available when needed and not used, imparted, accessed, altered, or deleted while being stored or retrieved, or transmitted. Data accessibility is the ability to access the data regardless of natural or artificial accidents, hardware, or others. Improving the accessibility of health data in the healthcare sector while ensuring privacy has been identified as a necessary capability that involves every individual and organization. Traditionally, healthcare interoperability has centered on sharing data between business institutions, such as various hospital systems. The emphasis has lately been on patient-driven information sharing, where the exchange of medical information is patient-mediated and patient-driven. We propose implementing a large-scale information infrastructure to access Smart Contracts sponsored by EHRs as information mediators. The decentralized nature of blockchain technology will aid in making the EHR accessible over a broader network. Using Blockchain will help make far- reaching changes in the healthcare industry by providing immutable, authentic, and accessible medical records, privacy, and faster payments.