Smart Patient Consent Management Model for Health Information Exchange Based on Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Innovation for Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) has been hindered by years of excessive regulation and inefficient bureaucracy. As data science and personalization encourage individuals to take an active role in their healthcare and regain control of their own medical records, there is an urgent need for new approaches. The ability to exchange electronic health records is fundamental in contemporary healthcare systems for facilitating a wider range of health services and delivering high-quality treatment. Despite the requirement for utilizing medical information for various reasons, most patients still authorize paper forms with minimal participation. The present methods of managing patient consent and medical data exchange are laborious, expensive, and prone to failures, even with quality assurance measures in effect. Because of this, there may not be enough patient empowerment, which can lead to inefficiencies in the process and a lack of trust and transparency. A shortage of resources makes it harder to acquire individual consent, which is necessary for health data exchange. Healthcare organizations also grapple with patient consent. Blockchain-based platforms enable data exchange by developing a trusted user network. Users can share their data without relying on health service providers for time and resources. Blockchain-based systems necessitate data governance frameworks to specify and monitor data exchange and use. This research article aims to establish a system that healthcare organizations may use to easily gain patient consent for various objectives, while also giving patients more flexibility in managing their consent. In this study, a novel electronic consent model namely ‘Smart Consent Blockchain Based System (SCBCS)”, is built on the hyper ledger fabric Blockchain that employs a purpose-based access control method. Distributed ledger technology (blockchain) ensures that all metadata pertaining to patient records, permissions, and data access cannot be altered once written. Additionally, Blockchain chain code is developed to handle patient consent-related business logic. A prototype is constructed and verified business logic with the chain code, validating the requestor's data access and patient permission saved in the Blockchain. The proposed SCBCS acts as a consent management system for patients and healthcare organizations. The proposed method is compared with other existing methods 'MedRec’, Consent Management System (CMS). The results demonstrate this system manages medical staff data access requests effectively. The proposed method outperforms other methods compared with low latency, less gas consumption, and low access time. This Blockchain-based proposed SCBCS technology offers great dependability, transparency, and traceability for patient data sharing in hospitals and research.