Blockchain-Based Electronic Health Record System Enforced by Ensemble Multi-Contract Approach
J. Antony Prince, N. Hemapriya, V. Muthulakshmi · 2021
Electronic health records (EHRs) are predominantly shared among radiologists, clinicians, pharmacists, healthcare providers and researchers for effective treatment and diagnosis, as they contain confidential and critical information about patients. The proposed solution requires the use of blockchain technology for the efficient management of health records. The electronic health record would have to be stored in such a way that it follows the norms of the blockchain architecture using the concept of proof of authority. The implementation results in dealing with privacy and security concerns and achieves scalability, providing role-based access, event traceability and an off-chain storage system using interplanetary file system. It operates as a distributed database that is validated by a decentralized community rather than a central entity. It’s a collection of records that a crowd oversees and maintains rather than relying on a single entity with a centralized server, leading to the creation of a decentralized ledger. Each of the blocks comprises numerous transactions with a link created among different blocks using a hash function to form a chain. When a record is created, it is verified across the distributed network of nodes and added to a block which is linked to the previous block, leading to a chain of blocks or blockchain. The management of health records utilizes a multi-contract approach aimed at securing the access control paradigm with better traceability.