The Role of Smart Contracts in Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in Blockchain Healthcare Systems

Abstract

In the last decade, blockchain technology has evolved in various applications, especially in healthcare systems where decision-making needs to be reliable, secure, and transparent. In these applications, the main concern is the storage and transfer of the patient's medical data to offer solutions for data privacy, user control over their data access, and satisfying regulatory compliance. Moreover, due to the need for security assurance and integration with other systems, i.e., traditional healthcare systems, the platform needs a system that, in addition to storing the data, can be able to simplify exchange and manage patient data records through collaboration with smart contracts. This chapter considers the constraints surrounding the role and growth of blockchain smart contracts in promoting healthcare regulatory compliance, positional questions that are yet to be resolved or explored, and boundaries in the underlying structure of international regulatory policies. The chapter introduces the methodological issues inherent in the process of resolution of regulatory compliance. The main purpose is to help system designers understand how to systematically evaluate how blockchain-based systems comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements. Further the study proposes a set of smart contracts for a blockchain-based healthcare data exchange aimed at the resolution of regulatory compliance accounting issues.