Addressing Scalability Issues in Blockchain: A Use case from Healthcare

Abstract

The opportunities with blockchain technology has grown immensely especially with its unique features such as immutability, transparency, decentralization etc. It is also important that the basic features such as privacy, security and scalability co-exists. Our novel study proposes a framework named ERSB (Enhanced Reliability of a Scalable Blockchain) implemented with Hyperledger fabric as a solution to address scalability issues. Multiple records are generated and processed during a patient’s hospital visits/stays, laboratory tests and insurance claims. When there are networks of hospitals under one umbrella (a group of hospitals), it is critical to address maintenance of this complex system in context of the afore-mentioned unique features. Our proposed framework uses a hierarchical model at hospital networks, laboratory and insurance company that has multiple levels. Stages are evaluated with nodes added along with smart contracts. Smart contracts are also amended with more changes to observe performance, reliability and latency of the model at the first level of hierarchy.