Enhancing Medical Data Transparency and Integrity with Blockchain Based Implementation

Abstract

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is one of the most common ways to represent patients' medical information digitally. It contains the patients' medical data such as medical history, diagnoses, medication, treatment plans, allergies, and much more medical-related information. However, medical data stored through this method is often centralized and is vulnerable to attacks. Hence its integrity and various aspects such as lack of transparency are constantly questioned and criticized. The implementation of blockchain, a decentralized technology that is immutable and transparent by nature, is proposed to investigate an alternative solution to these problems. Furthermore, blockchain's inherent implementation of cryptography and its consensus mechanisms allow data to be stored in the blockchain network immutable and transparent. By utilizing such characteristics, medical data can be stored and accessed by the stakeholders without worrying about data tampering. At the same time, the mandatory encryption ensures access is only available to those who are authorized. This paper discusses how medical data can be stored inside the blockchain network to retain the transparency and integrity of medical data.