A Proposed Distributed Off-Chain Medical Health Record Management Using Blockchain Technology and IPFS for HEIs
Michael Marvin P. Cruz, Ken M. Balogo, Chester L. Cofino, Dexter G. Dandan · 2024
The management and security of medical health records are of utmost importance in a higher education institution. Traditional centralized methods of managing and preserving medical records are prone to single points of failure, privacy issues, and other weaknesses. As healthcare record management becomes increasingly digitized and interconnected, institutions that embrace innovative solutions stand to gain acompetitive edge in advancing healthcare outcomes within their communities. The emergence of blockchain and decentralized technologies such as InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) presents an opportunity to address these issues by enabling a more secure and transparent system for managing medical health records. The authors propose an IPFS-based distributed off-chain solution for managing medical health records in a higher education institution (HEI) settings. The suggested solution tries to alleviate the drawbacks of the current record management systems of the institution by utilizing IPFS, a decentralized and content-addressable network. To ensure data integrity, immutability, and safe access management, the system architecture integrates IPFS with blockchain technology. The main elements and procedures for the proposed model are covered in this paper. The study work adds to the body of knowledge by introducing a novel method to HEIs for managing distributed off-chain medical records, which may be able to address the problems with centralized solutions. The advancement of safe, effective and ethical medical record management systems in the institution can be facilitated by additional research and development in this field.