Semi-Centralized Blockchain Based Distributed System for Secure and Private Sharing of Electronic Health Records

Abstract

An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is an electronic, official health record that contains a systematic collection of health information of a patient, which is maintained by a healthcare provider. EHRs have always been considered as the technology that has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, however, there are some drawbacks that prevents healthcare institutions from adopting them, and patients from supporting them. The main concerns are patients’ privacy and their data security, numerous data breaches of hospitals have caused the loss of patients’ EHRs. Multiple solutions have been proposed to allow the patients to take control of their EHR data access, but a secure, and private system that would allow for flawless sharing of EHRs does not exist. In this paper, a hybrid distributed system architecture that addresses these drawbacks is proposed. The proposed system utilizes the decentralized systems data storage model in a centralized system to allow for the high data reproducibility and availability of decentralized systems, while allowing for the high security by authorization and authentication of centralized systems; it also utilizes the blockchain which allows for security, patients pseudo-anonymity, patients’ EHRs usage consent requirement, and eventual consistency of data among peers, while keeping a ledger of all shared EHRs among healthcare providers.