Privacy-Conflict Resolution for Integrating Personal- and Electronic Health Records in Blockchain-Based Systems

Abstract

Despite the great potential for healthcare professionals, individuals, and researchers, integrating healthcare information from personal health records (PHR) and electronic health records (EHR) systems is complicated because of structural- and semantic heterogeneity and -privacy. Healthcare data is an emotional issue because of fear of privacy violations. Blockchain technology enables a patient's data privacy, transparency, and immutability in cross-organizational processes where a patient regulates access to his data and is aware of its usage. At the same time, blockchain technology creates new challenges for e-healthcare systems, such as data privacy, observability, and online enforceability. In this paper, we propose a design and formalization of a secure blockchain-based, and patient-centric system with a definition of PHR requirements, an ontology for privacy-conflict resolution- and management mechanisms that takes into account the emotional aspects related to sharing sensitive healthcare records. Throughout this paper, we illustrate our ideas with a running case about preventive- and personalized healthcare.