A Chaincode-based Framework for Securing Patient Health Information in Hospital Environment

Abstract

Goal of any healthcare system is to provide good service to the public in a most effective manner. The hospital healthcare system is a common platform for people to access the health related services, anytime and anywhere. This service is completely driven by the regulations and policies of government and hospital administration. At present most hospital systems in India lack a secure mechanism for maintaining and managing patient health records. This is a crucial capability which a hospital healthcare system must have. Failure to have a robust system will cause multiple issues like inaccessibility when required, wrongfully sharing patient health record or allowing unethical players to access the health records. This will ultimately lead to lack of trust in the system Most of the current hospital healthcare systems store information centrally and provide access to the connected nodes as required. This architecture leads to single point of failure when central server is down or crashes or gets hacked. To overcome this problem, we have proposed a Chaincode-based framework to secure patient health information in hospital environment. Chaincode is a smart contract program which gets executed on Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain network automatically. A Chaincode stores the information in decentralized digital ledger and creates a secured and private blockchain network with trusted nodes and provide data visibility, data security, and data transparency with respect to patient health record at any time. This technology could solve the above said problem in more efficient way and provide better visibility and transparency to patient health data with more security.