Track: Design and Analysis

Abstract

Blockchain technology had developed to a level where it could serve the purposes of the healthcare sector. With EHR as one of the deliverables of E-Health, blockchain could be utilized to address issues regarding security, privacy, and interoperability. This warrants the need for a proposed system to serve as a basis for future implementations. This paper aims to rationalize the application of blockchain to the healthcare sector and deliver a proposed system for developing a blockchain-based EHR system with an integrated browser-based web application that effectively facilitates the transmission of electronic health records between authorized healthcare organizations and manages the viewership of anonymized patient data. By reviewing multiple works of literature which were originally 106 in number but were filtered by relevance to 35, with the earliest publication in the year 2017, this study discusses the technological evolution of healthcare, the growing distrust of electronic health records, the components of blockchain, and considerations on the application of multiple blockchain model types to the healthcare sector, to rationalize the use of blockchain to the healthcare sector. Furthermore, based on the findings of this study, a proposed system for developing a blockchain-based EHR system with an integrated browser-based web application that effectively facilitates the transmission of electronic health records between authorized healthcare organizations and manages the viewership of anonymized patient data is proposed. With consideration of the concerns regarding privacy and integrity in the healthcare sector, such a system utilizes a consortium blockchain model, involving several organizations in authenticating the data in the system.