Enhancing healthcare information sharing with blockchain technology
Abstract
Blockchain, the foundation of many cryptocurrencies, also can be useful for many other industries such as healthcare. Blockchain can enforce immutability and non-repudiation for information stored on it. Although some say the technology is not yet mature enough, others are putting blockchain to the test with programs and pilots. Examining these efforts and dissecting the detail allows us to look at blockchain’s qualities and pitfalls to allow data sharing efforts with medical records.
It is widely agreed that sharing medical data outside of the silos where it is captured or created will benefit the individual’s care and outcomes. Regulation and personal humility often stand in the way of this sharing. Blockchain is offering new and novel ways to share data properly and securely with only the providers or researchers who are supposed to receive it. Blockchain is also allowing the patient to take control of their health data and in some cases, even profit from it. This is the concept behind a proposal by the author to allow a patient to share all or part of their data for research and to be justly compensated for that sharing.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Gordon, W. J., Catalini, C. (2018). Blockchain technology for healthcare: Facilitating the transition to patient-driven interoperability. Comput Struct Biotechnol J. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2018.06.003
Patel, V. (2019) A framework for secure and decentralized sharing of medical imaging data via blockchain consensus. Health Informatics Journal. Vol. 25(4) 1398–1411. https://doi.org/10.1177/1460458218769699
Zhou, L. (2017) Patient-centered knowledge sharing in healthcare organizations-- Identifying the external barriers. Informatics for Health & Social Care. Vol. 42 Issue 4, p409-420. 12p. DOI: 10.1080/17538157.2016.1269106.
Hovenga, E., Grain, H. (Eds.)(2013). Health information governance in a digital environment. IOS Press. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/franklin-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1477322
Dubovitskaya, A., Xu, Z., Ryu, S., Schumacher, M., Wang, F. (2017) Secure and trustable electronic medical records sharing using blockchain. AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings Archive. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977675/.
O'Donoghue O; Vazirani AA; Brindley D; Meinert E. (2019) Design choices and trade-offs in health care blockchain implementations: Systematic review. Journal Of Medical Internet Research. DOI: 10.2196/12426
Holbl, M., Kompara, M., Kamisalic, A., Zlatolas, L.N. (2018) A systematic review of the use of blockchain in healthcare. Symmetry. Vol. 10 Issue 10, p470. 22p.
Zhang, P., White, J., Schmidt, D., Lenz, G., Rosenbloom, S. (2018) FHIRChain: Applying blockchain to securely and scalably share clinical data. Comput Struct Biotechnol J. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2018.07.004
Kalkman, S., Mostert, M., Gerlinger, C., van Delden, J., and van Thiel, G. (2019) Responsible data sharing in international health research: a systematic review of principles and norms. BMC Med Ethics. DOI:10.1186/s12910-019-0359-9
Schmit, C., Kelly, K., Bernstein, J.(2019) Cross sector data sharing:Necessity, challenge, and hope. The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Vol 47(S2): 83-86. DOI: 10.1177/1073110519857325
Quarre, F., Israel, A. (2017) Blockchain: Catalyst for new healthcare ecosystem: Healthcare needs a way to share data, uncover patterns leading to better patient outcomes, and discover models for care that work securely and cost-effectively. CIO Insight. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com.links.franklin.edu/login.aspx?direct=trueanddb=cphandAN=124711106andsite=ehost-live
Giordanengo, A. (2019) Possible usages of smart contracts (blockchain) in healthcare and why no one is using them. International Medical Informatics Association. doi:10.3233/SHTI190292.
Shabani, M. (2019) Blockchain-based platforms for genomic data sharing: a de-centralized approach in response to the governance problems? Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Vol 26 (1). https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocy149
Zheng, X., Sun, S., Mukkamala, R., Vatrapu, R., Ordieres-Mere, J. (2019) Accelerating health data sharing: A solution based on the internet of things and distributed ledger technologies. Journal of Medical Internet Research. Vol 21 (6). doi: 10.2196/13583.
Johnson, M., Jones, M., Shervey, M., Dudley, J., Zimmerman, N. (2019) Building a secure biomedical data sharing decentralized app (DApp): Tutorial. Journal of Medical Internet Research. Vol. 21 (10). Retrieved from https://web-b-ebscohost-com.links.franklin.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0andsid=f23c699b-0da9-4852-adc1-dc79d301a686%40pdc-v-sessmgr03andbdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=139431372anddb=lih
Rahmadika, S., Rhee, K. (2019) Toward privacy-preserving shared storage in untrusted blockchain p2p networks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/6219868
SSD (n.a.)(2018) A deep dive on end-to-end encryption: how do public key encryption systems work? Surveillance Self Defense. Retrieved from https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/deep-dive-end-end-encryption-how-do-public-key-encryption-systems-work
Ekblaw, A., Azaria, A., Halamka, J. D., Lippmann, A. (2016) A case study for blockchain in healthcare:“MedRec” prototype for electronic health records and medical research data. [White paper]. Retrieved from https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59aae5e9a803bb10bedeb03e/t/5a6fd2f7e2c48387dff12676/1517278000381/blockchain-medical-records-patient-data-medrec-eckblaw.pdf
B., Brennan. (2018) Nebula genomics: Blockchain-enabled genomic data sharing. Blockchain Healthcare Review. Retrieved from https://blockchainhealthcarereview.com/nebula-genomics-blockchain-enabled-genomic-data-sharing/
DOI: https://doi.org/10.23954/osj.v5i2.2400
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Open Science Journal (OSJ) is multidisciplinary Open Access journal. We accept scientifically rigorous research, regardless of novelty. OSJ broad scope provides a platform to publish original research in all areas of sciences, including interdisciplinary and replication studies as well as negative results.