Blockchain Enabled Decentralized Application for Securing Electronic Medical Records with Smart Contracts

Abstract

The Electronic Medical Records of patients maintained needs to be ensured that privacy is preserved and must be accessible to authorized users such as doctors. Most of the health care systems use the traditional centralized database platforms for these data management; which is neither secure nor easy to maintain. These platforms can be replaced by distributed, efficient, and much more secure platforms which are backed by blockchain technology. In this work, a Decentralized application (dApp) is developed which allows users to upload and download medical data to and from the distributed file storage system. The application’s logic is written in solidity programming language in the smart contract. The application uses IPFS – Interplanetary File System, which is a distributed file storage system to store the medical records. Each file is broken down into pieces and each piece is given a hash which is stored on the blockchain. The user with right authentication has the privilege to access these hashes on the blockchain helping them in downloading the desired file. The application is tested through different nodes on the network which successfully resulted in securely storing and downloading the files from the distributed network. The results envision that the data stored in the IPFS is immutable, distributed across its network which makes it impossible for anyone to just access it. The dApp developed is tested with two performance metrics i.e. the number of transactions per unit time and the time taken to search records in the blockchain network and also the scalability issue pertaining to blockchain is also discussed.

Uncovering Security Vulnerabilities in Electronic Medical Record Systems: A Comprehensive Review of Threats and Recommendations for Enhancement

“…Strict access control and privacy measures are essential so that only approved users can access EMRs [15]. Establishing public trust in EHR systems is critical, given concerns about security and data management [16]. Protecting health information needs attention by establishing standards like HIPAA [17].…”

“…Previous studies have demonstrated various inherent security threats to EMR and EHR systems. Respondents expressed concerns about the increasing number of cyberattacks on electronic medical records [10], [16]. A comprehensive survey of security and privacy challenges in modern healthcare analyzed potential attacks and defenses, emphasizing the need for further research to enhance healthcare technology security and privacy [32].…”