Charuhasen Kumaraswamy
Electronic Health Records (EHR) are becoming increasingly widespread around the world. Medical data, such as patient personal information, diagnostic findings, and doctor prescriptions, are stored electronically in the healthcare business. However, contemporary EHR systems have several privacy and security issues. Currently, such sensitive data is stored using a centralized storage structure. One of the most significant drawbacks of the centralized model is the difficulty in maintaining user privacy. There have been proposals to employ distributed off-chain storage, such as the interplanetary file system, to improve security and privacy when storing patient and doctor health information due to its ability to access files with the use of content address hashing therefore making it a distributed system entirely.
Charuhasen Kumaraswamy
What is Blockchain?
The blockchain technology was first introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto along with his work on cryptocurrency. The purpose of the blockchain was to mitigate the chances of double spending from occurring. Blockchain became so popular that it was incorporated into a variety of other applications.
Blockchain is a digital ledger that is both tamper evident and resistant. It is made up of blocks that are cryptographically linked together. A cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transactional data make up each block. The information stored within the blocks are public therefore anyone can view and verify its contents. Its decentralized design means it is reliable and has no one point of failure and enables direct peer – to – peer transactions eliminating the need for third party exchanges and therefore eliminating the extra transaction fees and charges.
What are Electronic Health Records ?
Existing Works
MedRec
MedRec was one of the first ever ideas proposed for a blockchain-based medical record management system. It made use of the Ethereum Blockchain and Smart Contracts to store the health record’s accessibility details. Patient data, on the other hand, was not stored on the Blockchain, but rather off chain in a third party-managed patient Health Care Providers database. MedRec makes use of the Proof – Of – Work (PoW) Consensus. One of the most extensively used consensus mechanisms. To identify a block that meets the consensus process, PoW requires a large amount of computational power. When a new valid block is located and added to the blockchain, the miner who identified it is eligible to receive the predetermined reward.
Although this system provided both security and privacy for the users with the help of blockchain, its major drawback was the use of a centralized databse which defeated the puprpose of a distributed system and the use of PoW consesnus which requires high end hardware. Hardware that is not readily available in hospitals.
This implementation uses both the blockchain and a distributed database (Interplanetary File System),eliminating the disadvatages brought by a centralised database. IPFS is a decentralized protocol for storing materials such as data, websites, files, and applications – and accessing that content in a decentralized manner. IPFS can be used in a variety of ways,some of which is to eliminate censorship and a single point of failure.
Distributed databases allow for:
- Increased reliablility and availability
- Easier expansion
- Improved performance
