Enhancing Electronic Health Record Systems with Serverless Blockchain Integration
Abhijay Rana, Kevin Lu, Rudransh Singh · 2024
Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) are becoming an increasingly popular method for hospitals to store digitized patient records and medical data. However, as hospitals have accelerated in their adoption of EHRs nationwide, the concern of cyberattacks has simultaneously surged as well, leaving patient data vulnerable to data breaches. Blockchain technology offers a potential solution to enhance EHR cybersecurity due to its decentralized and immutable storage capabilities. However, despite the robust security and effectiveness of blockchains, it faces widespread adoption issues from hospitals. Significant costs and setup complexity hinder the use of blockchain in EHRs due to hospitals' lack of resources. The serverless application of blockchain, which reduces server load and energy usage by utilizing cold starts instead of keeping servers continuously running, offers an affordable alternative to hospitals. By integrating serverless architectures with blockchain, hospitals can utilize both secure and scalable EHR systems, combating the rise in cyberattacks. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive framework for the implementation of server-less blockchain technology in EHR systems. We explore the current vulnerabilities in EHR systems, and the benefits of serverless applications of blockchain, and propose a practical architecture for serverless blockchain integration.