Abstract
Security and privacy of patients’ data is a major concern in the healthcare industry. In this paper, we propose a system that activates robust security and privacy of patients’ medical records as well as enables interoperability and data exchange between the different healthcare providers. The work proposes the shift from patient’s electronic health records being managed and controlled by the healthcare industry to a patient-centric application where patients are in control of their data. The aim of this research is to build an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) system that is layered on the Ethereum blockchain platform and smart contract in order to eliminate the need for third-party systems. With this system, the healthcare provider can search for patient’s data and request the patients’ consent to access it. Patients manage their data which enables an expedited data exchange across EHR systems. Each patient’s data are stored on the peer-to-peer node ledger. The proposed patient-centric EHR platform is cross-platform compliant, as it can be accessed via personal computers and mobile devices and facilitates interoperability across healthcare providers as patients’ medical records are gathered from different healthcare providers and stored in a unified format. The proposed framework is tested on a private Ethereum network using Ganache. The results show the effectiveness of the system with respect to security, privacy, performance and interoperability.
Highlights
According to the Fierce healthcare report (https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/n umber-patient-records-breached-2019-almost-tripled-from-2018-as-healthcare-faces-new-threats), patients health data breach in the healthcare industry tripled in the year 2019 compared to past years as a result of little to non-existent security measures in Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems
Patient data from diverse healthcare providers are maintained in a standard format
The proposed application system was implemented by developing two major components: (1) the web application developed which is the patient-centric Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) using JavaScript (Nodejs) and (2) a smart contract that is written in Solidity which is an Ethereum programming language with JavaScript and Python encapsulated in it
Summary
-threats (accessed on 5 Feburary 2021)), patients health data breach in the healthcare industry tripled in the year 2019 compared to past years as a result of little to non-existent security measures in Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. Due to the above challenges, there is a need to develop an EHR system with advanced security at its core as well as decentralize the control of patient data. European Commission has adopted a recommendation on a European EHR exchange format [2] According to this recommendation (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-singl e-market/en/news/recommendation-european-electronic-health-record-exchange-format (accessed on 5 Feburary 2021)), citizens of the EU should be able to access and exchange their electronic health (e-health) data securely with any healthcare expert whenever they are in the EU. In [4], the effect of providing patients online access to e-health data is investigated. There are concerns related to the workload, security and privacy
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