Preserving the Privacy of Electronic Health Records using Blockchain

Abstract

Abstract Electronic health records (EHRs) are health information of patients that are saved digitally in a network. Various opportunities to enhance patient care, performance measures in clinical practice and contribute to clinical research in the future are provided by EHRs. The schemes used to store EHRs have been very insecure in the present era of smart cities and homes. The data can be easily breached by hackers and unauthorized external parties. Also, the data is not accessible to patients and care providers. These schemes are unable to create a balance between data security and data accessibility. But blockchain can resolve these issues. Blockchain creates a ledger system that is immutable and allows the transactions to take place in a decentralized manner. The three main features of blockchain technology - Security, Decentralization, and Transparency make any application built using it secure and not accessible by unauthorized parties. The manipulation of data is almost impossible to do in a blockchain network. In this project, we propose a system to implement EHRs using blockchain technology and make EHRs more secure and private. The blockchain technology will keep control over access to information using its cryptographic techniques and decentralization. It will also maintain the balance between data privacy and data accessibility. Our main objective of this project is the framing of data privacy and security issues in electronic healthcare