Hybrid Architecture Based on Blockchain Technology and Smart Contracts for Healthcare Applications

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to design a hybrid architecture based on blockchain technology and smart contracts for healthcare applications. The problem that will be addressed is how to achieve a balance between the three standard concepts of the success of the health system, which are: “privacy,” “security,” and “efficiency and effectiveness of data usage.” The authors proposed a hybrid architecture for a more balanced approach by storing the light information in the blockchain (distributed and decentralized storage), except for large media files, which are in the central storage, which reduces the cost of storing large files and raises the protection of critical information. For demonstration, an application was developed based on the proposed architecture and using smart contracts with the help of an IPFS server as a document storage method, and using MetaMask application as an authentication tool.