Towards a Trusted Collaborative Medical Decision-Making Platform

Traditionally, shared decision-making has been considered as a one-off dyadic encounter between a patient and physician within the confines of the consultation room. In practice, several stakeholders are involved, and the decision-making process involves multiple rounds of interaction and can be influenced by different biopsychosocial, cultural, spiritual, financial, and legal determinants. Thus, there is an opportunity for developing an innovative digital platform for distributed collaborative medical decision-making. However, given the sensitive nature of data and decisions, there are several challenges associated with safeguarding the consent, privacy, and security of the contributors to the decision-making process. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework and reference architecture for a trusted collaborative medical decision-making (TCMDM) platform that addresses some of these challenges by using a consensus building mechanism built on top of blockchain technology. We illustrate how the TCMDM platform functions by using a real-life use case scenario of an early stage breast cancer patient collaborating with other stakeholders to reach consensus on the best treatment plan.