A Comprehensive Blockchain-Based Architecture for Healthcare Systems

Abstract

Blockchain technology has emerged as a versatile solution with wide-ranging applications across various industries, including healthcare. The increasing number of breaches in medical records in health systems highlights the imperative for innovative solutions. This paper delves into the potential of blockchain to improve information management in healthcare systems, considering data privacy, cybersecurity, and reliability concerns. We propose a blockchain-based architecture that takes into account key entities of healthcare systems, such as patients, physicians, diagnostic centers, and pharmacies, and facilitates their transactions through the use of blockchain technology. Through comprehensive sequence diagrams, we illustrate the orchestrated interactions among selected entities. The paper presents a proof of concept implementation, providing details on application development, smart contract specifications facilitating seamless information sharing, and the tests conducted. The implementation of the blockchain-based architecture and sequence diagrams was successfully tested. We conclude that the proposed architecture enables the improvement of the data privacy of entities, the cybersecurity of data sharing among diverse entities, and the reliability of transactions within healthcare systems.