Blockchain-Powered Healthcare Information Exchange Systems to Support Various Stakeholders

Initially, blockchain technology was emerged for the enhancement of financial transactions, as it is independent of the need to have any third party to verify the transactions. Progressively, it has been slightly modified based on the different application-specific requirements such as data security and privacy. One of the emerging applications of blockchain is E-healthcare that concerns mainly about integrity, authenticity, and consistency of patients’ medical records. Due to the evolution of Internet of Things (IoT), a lot of healthcare data is being produced through the use of various devices like smart watches, smart sphygmomanometer, smart thermometer, etc. This imposes the need to concern about scalability along with interoperability. A novel architecture to handle the electronic medical records (EMR) of the patients by various medical entities is proposed. As large amounts of records are to be handled, the healthcare archives are kept in the cloud for streamlining the usage of information among diverse stakeholders. Also, there is a provision to enable the measures that handle security and privacy in the cloud architecture. Suitable public key cryptography and hashing methods are exploited to maintain the past transactions corresponding to the patients’ records. This preserves confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It also prevents the modification or falsification of data by unauthorized persons. Using blockchains, patients’ records can be added only at the end of the database, but they cannot be removed. New records are securely connected to the preceding record using cryptographic hashing. Special node called data validator is used to check the quality and authenticity of user-uploaded data, from which the records can be examined and patient health status reports are prepared. Again, encryption and digital signing are performed on the data to store it back to the blockchain. This proposed system ensures that no individual can modify or damage the verified records that are already stored. Our proposed novel architecture was tested against MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, and the stated functionality requirements are met.