Use of Blockchain Technology to Protect Privacy in Electronic Health Records- A Review

Patients' medical files are electronically preserved and accessible through a network such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Numerous opportunities exist for EHRs to enhance patient care, clinical practice performance indicators, and potential future clinical research contributions. The techniques used to preserve EHRs have proved incredibly unsafe in the contemporary era of smart homes and urban areas. Data can be easily accessed by hackers and unauthorized third parties. Furthermore, the data is not accessible to patients or healthcare practitioners. These plans cannot balance the accessibility and security of the data. But with blockchain, these issues can be resolved. Any application created utilizing blockchain technology is secure and inaccessible to unauthorized parties thanks to the three critical characteristics of the technology: Security, Decentralization, and Transparency. In a blockchain network, it is nearly difficult to manipulate data. This research work utilizes blockchain technology to deploy EHRs and improve their security and privacy. With its decentralized structure and cryptographic techniques, blockchain technology will maintain control over who gets access to information. Furthermore, it will maintain a balance between accessing data and privacy. The advanced aspects of the EHR system are handled by this research using smart contracts. The comprehensive healthcare management solution across a network can incorporate several sectors, such as billing and transportation. A website program can be combined with it to increase interactivity. By adding pharmacists to the system as a participant, EHRs can help them track medical sales.

I. Introduction

The development of technology over the last few decades has had an impact on many aspects of daily living. It helped us in many areas of everyday life, particularly in healthcare. In recent years, the healthcare sector has made considerable advancements. The medical records can now be kept electronically. Clinicians could make better patient diagnoses, patient-doctor communication became simple, and patients could access doctors right away in an emergency [1]. The patients may communicate with their doctors even from a distance, thanks to electronic records. But in addition to its benefits, contemporary technology also has its downsides. Hackers benefited from improved hacking tools made available by the advancement of information technology to access records modifying them.