Medical Records Management and Biofeedback with Blockchain Technology

Blockchain is one of the frontline technologies of the future, which is largely emerging as a highly secured distributed database mechanism. It was introduced as the backend of the top-grossing cryptocurrency of Bitcoin but now showing its strength in various other industries, too, including healthcare. Blockchain-based data management can ensure more security, integrity, and incorruptibility of the information by means of standard cryptography.

Blockchain offers many features which are suitable for highly reliable and secured data storage. This article will try to dig deeper into the blockchain architecture of applications in healthcare records management and biofeedback management. Usually, this framework uses blockchain-based smart to establish records management to ensure more privacy and security of the patient data. More importantly, blockchain techniques will also help accelerate the exchange of medical information by reducing the overhead of human resources and other expenses. The patients also have the privilege to handle the medical records in a given framework.

Challenges in conventional medical records management

Medical records management in the conventional model faces many challenges in terms of data privacy and assuring compliance with regulations like HIPAA. It is well known that the conventional architecture of medical records management is largely inefficient for ideal medical records exchange. This led to enormous wastage of time, money, and human resources.

Blockchain is ideally a distributed database, which can store the data in many distributed nodes to avoid any halting problems. The adoption of blockchain techniques, however, introduced more secured data sharing and management. Cryptographic properties of blockchain-based networks will guarantee more privacy and security. The scope of incorruptibility and data integrity will help medical data from being misused or tampered. Thereby, it will provide more stability and consistency. The challenge of DDoS or distributed denial-of-service attacks can be solved by using blockchain methodologies.

Effective use of blockchain technology in medical records management will not only offer reliability and confidentiality but can also help to speed up the exchange of medical records for expedited patient care. This feature owes to the decentralization of blockchain data, where the ownership of confidential medical records is fully returned to patients, and they are in charge of managing their records directly.

Biofeedback

This is a technique that uses many sensors and devices to monitor the functions of the human body and organs like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, etc. The objective of biofeedback is to help learn the real-time health condition of a human being. There are many integrated systems for biofeedback now, and there is biofeedback training given in hospitals and clinics. These data being monitored from time to time are important in ongoing therapies or future medical care to ensure apt and accurate treatments for medical conditions. It is also essential to store this real-time data and historical records to be integrated into a medical record system. For database management of medical records, you can rely on the consulting offered by RemoteDBA.com.

Ethereum-based medical records management

Instead of the conventional centralized relational databases, Ethereum blockchain is applied to medical records for better data security. The storage is done in distributed nodes within the blockchain network by using contracts. Smart contracts are automatically generated for administration procedures aimed at reducing wastage of human resources and also speeding up medical management.

Almost all advanced records management systems and applications in the healthcare sector now have Ethereum blockchain architecture. The framework for medical records management is based on smart contracts, and the architecture is modified from the given framework. The entire system can be considered as a standalone private blockchain in which all the records are stored for optimum data security. There is an Innovatively collaboration data exchange system, where a system recognizes the user identity in the machine learning ecosystem, and the corresponding privileges are authorized for assuring data integrity in blockchain networks.

Registrar contract

Registrar contract or RC is a specific contract type that maps the identification strings of members to the corresponding Ethereum address. All registered members can be put into two categories: medical personnel who access the medical records for effective healthcare services and the patients. Each of these identities will be given specific access and privileges.

PPR or Patient-provider relationship

PPR is identified as a smart contract which is like a medical certificate for functional management. This smart contract can be used to record the existing situation of the medical records, diagnosis details, and access permission to different contracts. In some cases, there is relevant other relevant PPR diagnostic address information that may also be included. The PPR contract owner may license all these smart contracts to regulate the smart contract access to various involved parties. The medical personnel at various levels will be able to view only or modify the same based on the preset privileges. There will be an administration system also which can track the current diagnosis with the support of a PPR contract.

SC / Summary contract

This is another mode of Ethereum based smart contract, which carries a list of PPR references. It will help locate the medical record history of a patient. This patient-oriented classification of medical records, whereas each of the records are viewed as a smart contract.

Private blockchain for medical records

Critical medical records networks can be managed with a private blockchain, where hospitals and medical centers maintain the critical device’s network. There is a distributed database among them that must be synchronized. With this, the clinics and healthcare facilities only need to synchronize their data with the nearby blockchain nodes to ensure their DB stays correct and secured. In a private blockchain, the primary network nodes as the hospitals or medical centers, remain responsible for dealing with requests as their network is capable of handling heavy traffic with plenty of queries. The correctness and synchronization speed must be guaranteed with the primary nodes in the blockchain network.

So, here we have investigated blockchain-based medical records systems and smart contracts. In the future, we can expect the drug pedigree to also be included in the blockchain systems. With this, we can also effectively manage and control drug traceability.