The Future of E-Health: Blockchain Solutions with Hyperledger Fabric and IPFS

Abstract

The electronic representation of a patient's medical information is called an electronic health record, or EHR. Normally, these records are kept on cloud-based or central servers. Blockchain technology is a new technology used to solve security and privacy problems of EHR data in a decentralized way. Hence, they are accessible to authorized health providers for better management of patient care. Building secure e-health systems with public blockchains such as Ethereum faces several problems. The main issue is that these blockchains are permissionless; everybody can join in and obtain access to the data, which becomes a cause of significant privacy concerns. This research proposes a private and decentralized e-healthcare system using Hyperledger Fabric and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for securely and effectively storing and retrieving EHRs. Privacy and security are guaranteed with Hyperledger Fabric in ensuring that only authorized parties can access sensitive medical information. The system is further enhanced to include decentralized storage based on IPFS for the storage of medical images and files that cannot be directly stored in the blockchain.