A Patient-Centric Health Information Exchange Framework Using Blockchain Technology

Health Information Exchange (HIE) exhibits remarkable benefits for patient care such as improving healthcare quality and expediting coordinated care. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology is seeking patient-centric HIE designs that shift data ownership from p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics 2020-08, Vol.24 (8), p.2169-2176
Main Authors: Zhuang, Yan, Sheets, Lincoln R., Chen, Yin-Wu, Shae, Zon-Yin, Tsai, Jeffrey J.P., Shyu, Chi-Ren
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blockchain
Computer Communication Networks
Computer simulation
Contracts
Cryptography
Data exchange
Data models
Data privacy
data segmentation
Distributed ledger
electronic health records (EHR)
Feasibility
Health care
Health care facilities
Health Information Exchange
health information exchange (HIE)
Humans
Informatics
Information exchange
Information technology
Medical services
patient-centric
Patients
Privacy
Security
Segmentation
smart contract
Stability analysis
Technology
Workflow
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Summary:Health Information Exchange (HIE) exhibits remarkable benefits for patient care such as improving healthcare quality and expediting coordinated care. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology is seeking patient-centric HIE designs that shift data ownership from providers to patients. There are multiple barriers to patient-centric HIE in the current system, such as security and privacy concerns, data inconsistency, timely access to the right records across multiple healthcare facilities. After investigating the current workflow of HIE, this paper provides a feasible solution to these challenges by utilizing the unique features of blockchain, a distributed ledger technology which is considered "unhackable". Utilizing the smart contract feature, which is a programmable self-executing protocol running on a blockchain, we developed a blockchain model to protect data security and patients' privacy, ensure data provenance, and provide patients full control of their health records. By personalizing data segmentation and an "allowed list" for clinicians to access their data, this design achieves patient-centric HIE. We conducted a large-scale simulation of this patient-centric HIE process and quantitatively evaluated the model's feasibility, stability, security, and robustness.
ISSN:2168-2194
2168-2208
DOI:10.1109/JBHI.2020.2993072