A patient-centric health information exchange framework using blockchain technology

Abstract

Health Information Exchange (HIE) exhibits remarkable benefits for patient care such as improving healthcare quality and expediting coordinated care. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology is seeking patient-centric HIE designs that shift data ownership from providers to patients. There are multiple barriers to patient-centric HIE in the current system, such as security and privacy concerns, data inconsistency, timely access to the right records across multiple healthcare facilities. After investigating the current workflow of HIE, this paper provides a feasible solution to these challenges by utilizing the unique features of blockchain, a distributed ledger technology which is considered 'unhackable'. Utilizing the smart contract feature, which is a programmable self-executing protocol running on a blockchain, we developed a blockchain model to protect data security and patients' privacy, ensure data provenance, and provide patients full control of their health records. By personalizing data segmentation and an 'allowed list' for clinicians to access their data, this design achieves patient-centric HIE. We conducted a large-scale simulation of this patient-centric HIE process and quantitatively evaluated the model's feasibility, stability, security, and robustness.