Design and Implementation of a Personal Health Record Platform Based on Patient-consent Blockchain Technology

Abstract

In the 4th Industrial Revolution, the healthcare industry is undergoing a paradigm shift from post-care and management systems based on diagnosis and treatment to disease prevention and management based on personal precision medicine. To optimize medical services for individual patients, an open ecosystem for the healthcare industry that allows the exchange and utilization of personal health records (PHRs) is required. However, under the current system of hospital-centered data management, it is difficult to implement the linking and sharing of PHRs in practice. To address this problem, in this study, we present the design and implementation of a patient-centered PHR platform using blockchain technology. This platform achieved transparency and reliability in information management by eliminating the risk of leakage and tampering/altering personal information, which could occur when using a PHR. In addition, the patient-consent system was applied to a PHR; thus, the patient acted as the user with ownership. The proposed blockchain-based PHR platform enables the integration of personal medical information with scattered distribution across multiple hospitals, and allows patients to freely use their health records in their daily lives and emergencies. The proposed platform is expected to serve as a stepping stone for patient-centered healthcare data management and utilization.