HapiChain: A Blockchain-based Framework for Patient-Centric Telemedicine

Abstract

Given the exploding number of the elderly and patients with chronic diseases and the uneven distribution of clinicians, it is economically impossible to continue traditional medicine. Hence, the healthcare sector has been gradually gravitating towards telemedicine, which applies intelligent systems for more comprehensive medical services with minimum costs. The criticality of data and process involved in telemedicine raise various concerns in terms of reliability and security. To this end, in this paper, we propose HapiChain, a blockchain-based framework for patient-centric telemedicine. HapiChain exploits blockchain technology to improve security, scalability, and reliability of medical workflows. Although HapiChain is patient-centric, it also helps the clinicians to save time and prevent unnecessary trips without improvising the level of treatment. In HapiChain, we embed two primary telemedicine services, namely telemonitoring and teleconsultation. For the former service, Hapicare, an existing healthcare monitoring system with self-adaptive coaching using probabilistic reasoning, is used. HapiChain then completes this service by adding teleconsultation services exploiting blockchain technology. The HapiChain framework includes three main layers: (i) interface layer, (ii) DApp layer, and (iii) blockchain layer. In the first layer, Hapicare is used to communicates with the users, i.e., patients and doctors. DApp layer includes the required procedures for security and scalability of HapiChain, namely smart contracts and distributed storage. The latter is achieved using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). In the blockchain layer, Ethereum blockchain is used as a platform of DApps. We evaluate the HapiChain framework and the proposed teleconsultation services in a use-case.