The Application of Blockchain Technology in Healthcare Sectors 7<\/p>\n
Executive Summary<\/p>\n
The health industry is embracing cloud-based technologies to boost the accessibility of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and patient medical data. Though, the Data security and data privacy issues exist with cloud-based technology. The suggested Hyperledger Fabric is incorporated into the blockchain solution to deliver trustworthy health information. Exchange system (HIE). The suggested system would also enhance other areas of the expediting insurance claims, the health sector supports organizations that do research and insurance. Provides comprehensive patient data for research while allowing patients to exchange HIE and physician. The healthcare industry is shifting to cloud-based technologies to boost the accessibility of Electronic Health Records (EHR) and patient medical information. Even so, the Cloud-based technology presents issues with data security and privacy. It was suggested to provide a trustworthy Health Information, the blockchain system combines Hyperledger Fabric. Exchange (HIE) system Additionally, the suggested system will enhance the other areas by facilitating quicker insurance claims, the health sector supports businesses in insurance and research while sharing HIE across patients, comprehensive patient data for research purposes, also a doctor.<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/p>\n
Using a peer-to-peer computer network, blockchain is a digital, decentralized ledger\/database that compiles a library of assets and trades. It acts as a common ownership and activity registry that is secured by cryptography, and its history is ultimately stored as blocks of data that are then connected and secured together by cryptography, without the need for a centralised authority (Radanovic & Likic 2018). The healthcare sector, particularly hospitals and its stakeholders, has undergone a transformation thanks to the adoption of blockchain technology to promote Health Information Exchange (HIE). The use of blockchain networks has aided hospitals in planning and delivering the best care to their patients. Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) is the current, unreliable method used by hospitals to share patient data (Zang & Poslad 2018). Due to the similarly distributed ledger, the use of blockchain technology in HIE enables users to participate in the network and build trust (Krawiec 2016). Additionally, the consortium company permits all network peers to access and communicate with one another (Anon 2017). This is advantageous to all parties since it makes it simple to obtain patient insurance records, allowing the hospital to deliver services effectively and delivering real-time records to the insurance provider. Enterprise-ready enterprises like hospitals benefit from the governance of the proposed Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology in terms of scalability, and performance (Murugan et al. 2020). Despite the many benefits that blockchain technology offers, the proposed solution will still face some risks and difficulties because of the high permission requirements of Hyperledger Fabric and the potential for data theft by hackers. 2016 (Mettler). Additionally, the generational gap will be a big factor in the proposed blockchain solution’s failure, as the older generation lacks the technological know-how and makes up the majority of hospital patients (Patterson 2020). Due to the increased adoption of blockchain technology across a wide range of businesses, firms in numerous industries can benefit from future trends in this technology. Blockchain technology has the potential to develop into a real-world business ecosystem that will help all participating industries.<\/p>\n
Context of the Business <\/p>\n
Hospitals have served as a hub for technological and human advancement that has impacted a wide range of stakeholders. These parties include medical professionals as well as hospital and research employees. The stakeholders stated above serve as the hospital’s target market. Certain techniques are put into practice in order to please and serve its target market. One of a hospital’s primary objectives is to offer a service that is tailored and attended by the top experts in the particular sector. Because their present doctor would have access to their medical records, convincing potential patients and customers to switch to our facility can be a challenge. However, the use of blockchain technology, which is targeted primarily at the Health Information Exchange (HIE), would hasten, streamline, and benefit all parties involved in our hospital’s operations. This is so that treatment may be administered in a timely way since doctors would have easy access to patient files prior to consultation.<\/p>\n
Current Approach<\/p>\n
Today Medical treatment has been creatively broadened thanks to new technological possibilities. The stowage of health records is one region that has benefited from developments in communication and data tech expertise. Medics and physicians used to save paper records in safe storage facilities before the coming of electronic medical records (EMRs) (Sorkin, 2020). Health workers and support personnel now have new and improved ways to access their information, thanks to EMRs. Moreover, as healthcare makes use of EMRs or EHRs, there are risks associated with electronic medical records. The safety of documents as it is transformed from one device to another may face a breach (Sorkin, 2020). Patients’ and physician records may be stolen for malicious action as the cases of cyber-attacks are on the increase. In some cases, the adoption of EMRs raises a number of potential liability concerns. When moving from a paper-based to a computerized EMR system, for instance, medical data could be lost or deleted, which could result in treatment errors. Doctors might be held accountable if they do not use all the information available to them because they have increased contact to health data through EMR (Gallagher, 2022). Another factor is knowing how accurate the data is. Failing to update the information immediately may lead to the use of inappropriate information and hence incorrect treatment procedures can be undertaken (Gallagher, 2022). The current electronic medical records seem to be outdated since patients are looking forward to instant, accurate, secure and reliable data systems that govern the sharing of ill individuals\u2019 data.<\/p>\n
Trust Creation and the Business Model<\/p>\n
There are several approaches to build trust between the hospital and the concerned parties through the usage of blockchain technology in HIE for EMR. First of all, thanks to the distributed ledger, every access request made at every access point is tracked (Krawiec 2016). Due to the ability to trace data flows back to their source, this improves security within the blockchain. Second, because blockchain technology will employ cryptographic techniques, any network nodes will be able to participate in interactions without having to establish prior confidence with the network’s involved parties. Additionally, the blockchain helps establish trust amongst peers because there is no central authority in the network (Medium 2020). All network participants’ transaction blocks are tracked and distributed to accomplish this. As a result, any attempt to communicate with the blockchain will be known by every peer in the system, and participants will need to authenticate before adding it to the blockchain (Murugan et al. 2020). Data that has been added to the blockchain cannot be changed or removed once it has been logged, making it immutable by definition.<\/p>\n
Due to the fact that every peer in the network will have the same copy of the data, this helps reduce data redundancy. The addition of blockchain to HIE would also give patients complete ownership of their medical records. This can aid in restricting it so that only particular healthcare organizations review it. Furthermore, as information is exchanged within the blockchain network, it will be instantly updated and available to medical entities in real-time. (Murugan et al. 2020). As a result, there is less data redundancy because every network peer will have the same copy of the data. Additionally, patients would have complete control over their medical records as a result of the integration of blockchain into HIE. This can aid in restricting review to particular healthcare organizations. Additionally, as data is shared across the blockchain network, the data will be immediately updated and available to medical entities in real-time. Since the risk is shared by all network members, this business model enables each peer to reduce the network risk. Additionally, this business model enables the network’s peers to quickly learn from one another. Consequently, each participant’s effectiveness will rise, helping each organization and the network as a whole (Kaleido, 2019). For instance, based on the types of illnesses and ailments the hospital is logging in the network, the research center will know which treatments to create and produce.<\/p>\n
Governance of the Hyperledger Fabric Network<\/p>\n
Due to the distributed authorization-based nature of the Fabric network, all peers must register in order to access it. Hyperledger modeling and the use of access control languages are used to regulate network access (Peterson et al. 2016). A business-ready network is given secrecy, scalability, and performance through the usage of distributed ledger technology in the form of adaptable blockchain architecture (Murugan et al. 2020). The Fabric network uses “Chain Code” for its users’ smart contracts, just like any other blockchain network. Due to its configurable and modular architecture, the use of Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain technology has enabled resourcefulness, optimization, and modernization for a variety of use-cases in the industry (Dubovitskaya et al. 2017). Additionally, the use of Hyperledger Fabric has made it possible to replace DSL with smart contracts written in several general-purpose languages like Java, Go, and Node.js (Domain-Specific language). Contrary to permission-less platforms, Fabric is a totally permission-based platform, implying that every peer is aware of every other peer. Instead of being unnamed, the network becomes completely untrusted as a result. Hyperledger Fabric supports a new construction called Execute-order-validate for network communications (Ekblaw et al. 2016). As a result, this design successfully addresses a number of issues raised by the order-execute-model, including discretion, resilience, enactment, tractability, and scalability. To do this, the transaction flow is divided into three phases. Run the transactions first, then confirm their accuracy. Second, organize the transactions by using the consensus protocol. Finally, before entering the transaction into the ledger, it should be authenticated against the application-specific authorisation mechanism. Due to the Hyperledger fabric’s multi-layer permissions, the owner of the data has right to use to and control over it (Ponsack 2015).<\/p>\n
Blockchain Blueprint<\/p>\n
Figure 1: Blockchain-based healthcare data management system among various stakeholders (nodes) within a healthcare ecosystem<\/p>\n
Image from: https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/landig\/article\/PIIS2589-7500(21)00210-7\/fulltext <\/p>\n
Possible Risks and Challenges<\/p>\n
Several cyber-attacks have targeted such personal information. Numerous medical organizations have experienced hacking incidents that resulted in the theft of millions of patient records. In order to offer instructions to healthcare applications on how personal data should be stored, processed, and secured in order to prevent fraud and theft, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Act 2018 has been introduced (Antwi et al., 2021). Despite this, hackers still appear to find the healthcare sector to be an easy target, and this is because the sector has a poor understanding of technology. Data security issues in this area are demonstrated by recent attacks on the healthcare sector. Phishing and ransomware attacks are examples of target offenses that successfully recover personal information. In fact, the prevalence of ransomware attacks has exposed the absence of fundamental security precautions like backups and system updates.<\/p>\n
Future Trends and its Impacts <\/p>\n
The increased use of blockchain technology across numerous industries will be one of the major themes of the future. The blockchain solution that has been put forth will benefit greatly from this. First, it will address energy usage, one of the biggest problems with blockchain technology. Businesses that have adopted this technology will work together to find solutions to reduce or eliminate the high energy consumption that is related to blockchain technology. Second, the diverse business models in various industries would contribute to the development of an actual business ecosystem (Deloitte 2020). This would make it easier for the suggested blockchain technology to interact with different industries and benefit the general population.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/p>\n
The expansion in technology, invention and innovation grows daily. Therefore, various sectors and industries are ready to test the new features of the technology that can automate the services and improve the safety of data. Healthcare is an industry that holds large amounts of data records that best suits blockchain technology. Due to efficiency, reliability, data safety and availability of data to be shared between the users, blockchain technology should take place in the health industry for the purpose of secure, reliable and accurate Health Information Exchange (HIE).<\/p>\n
References<\/p>\n
Anon 2017. Hashed Health; Accenture Joins Hashed Health Blockchain Consortium to Develop and Implement Healthcare Industry Use Cases. Journal of Engineering, p.307. <\/p>\n
Antwi, M., Adnane, A., Ahmad, F., Hussain, R., Habib ur Rehman, M., & Kerrache, C. (2021). The case of HyperLedger Fabric as a blockchain solution for healthcare applications.\u00a0Blockchain: Research And Applications,\u00a02(1), 100012. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.bcra.2021.100012 <\/p>\n
Deloitte. Blockchain Trends For 2020. [online] Available at: https:\/\/www2.deloitte.com\/content\/dam\/Deloitte\/ie\/Documents\/Consulting\/BlockchainTr ends-2020-report.pdf, Accessed 6 November 2020. <\/p>\n
Dubovitskaya, A., Xu, Z., Ryu, S., Schumacher, M. and Wang, F. 2017. Secure and trustable electronic medical records sharing using blockchain. In AMIA annual symposium proceedings, 2017, pp. 650. <\/p>\n
Ekblaw, A., Azaria, A., Halamka, J.D. and Lippman, A. 2016. A Case Study for Blockchain in Healthcare:\u201cMedRec\u201d prototype for electronic health records and medical research data. In Proceedings of IEEE open & big data conference, 13, pp. 13. <\/p>\n
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Kaleido 2019. Top 7 Ways To Make Your Blockchain Consortia Work. [online] Available at: https:\/\/medium.com\/@kaleido_io\/top-7-ways-to-make-your-blockchain-consortia- work20341f901cae, Accessed 6 November 2020. <\/p>\n
Krawiec, R., Housman, D., White, M., Filipova, M., Quarre, F., Barr, D., Nesbitt, A., Fedosova, K., Killmeyer, J., Israel, A. and Tsai, L. 2016. Blockchain: Opportunities for health care. In Proc. NIST Workshop Blockchain Healthcare, pp. 1-16. <\/p>\n
Medium. 2020. An Introduction To Hyperledger Fabric. [online] Available at: https:\/\/medium.com\/@deeptiman\/an-introduction-to-hyperledger-fabric-a58094ac5717, Accessed 6 November 2020.<\/p>\n
Mettler, M., 2016, September. Blockchain technology in healthcare: The revolution starts here. In 2016 IEEE 18th international conference on e-health networking, applications and services (Healthcom), pp. 1-3. <\/p>\n
Murugan, A., Chechare, T., Muruganantham, B. and Kumar, S.G. 2020. Healthcare information exchange using blockchain technology. International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, 10(1), pp. 421. <\/p>\n
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Poslad, S. 2018. Blockchain support for flexible queries with granular access control to electronic medical records (EMR). In 2018 IEEE International conference on communications (ICC). pp. 1-6.<\/p>\n
Sorkin, C. (2020).\u00a0Types of EMR Systems. Wheel. Retrieved 19 October 2022, from https:\/\/www.wheel.com\/companies-blog\/types-of-emr-systems#:~:text=Electronicmedicalrecords(EMR)software,therecordsbecomemoresecure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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