Decentralized Electronic Health Record System

Abstract

With a view to overcome the shortcomings of traditional Electronic Health Record (EHR) system so as to assure the interoperability by providing open access to sensitive health data, while still preserving personal data privacy, anonymity and avoiding data misuse, Decentralized Electronic Health Record System was developed. The aforementioned issue concerning traditional EHR system can be addressed by implication of emerging technology of the era namely Block chain, together with Inter Planetary File System (IPFS) which enables data sharing in decentralized and transactional fashion, thereby maintaining delicate balance between privacy and accessibility of electronic health records. A block chain based EHR system has been built for secure, efficient and interoperable access to medical records by both patients and doctors while preserving privacy of the sensitive patient’s information. Patients can easily and comprehensively access to their medical records across providers and treatment sites using unique properties of block chain and decentralized storage. A separate portal for both the patients and doctors has been built enabling the smart contracts to handle further interaction between doctors and patients. So, in this system, it is demonstrated how principles of decentralization and block chain architectures could contribute to EHR system using Ethereum smart contracts and IPFS to orchestrate a suitable system governing the medical record access while providing patients with comprehensive record review along with consideration for audit ability and data sharing.