A Blockchain Solution for Universal Electronic Health Record: Mexican Healthcare System Case

Abstract

The Mexican health system cover around 69 million people by public healthcare programs and private institutions. A universal electronic health record (EHR) is a fundamental software to enhance the quality of medical services and administrative procedures, and only until 2013 the law focused in this topic was decreed. Due to this, the EHRs in Mexico are very fragmented and have little coverage throughout the country, also they do not comply the international requirements and the totality of the public standards. In this work the technical, functional and legal requirements for EHR systems are presented and described where blockchain technology arise as a fundamental framework to meet them, also a review of conventional server-client EHRs in Mexico and the most important blockchain based EHR implementations are exposed. Finally, the architecture, the components description and the software design patterns necessary in a universal EHR are exposed and explained, in which the technical and functional requirements are accomplished, and in the case of the Mexican healthcare system the legal requirements are met too.