Skip to main content

Connecting Heterogeneous Electronic Health Record Systems Using Tangle

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 935))

Abstract

Currently, Electronic Medical Records (EHRs) are centralized and arduous to move around. Getting crucial information in front of a doctor shouldn’t be as difficult as it is. We want to solve a core problem of how to distribute transparent, updated medical data to a network of caregivers securely. Due to the current centralized nature of data ownership, there would be no guarantee to deliver untampered up-to-date information unless distributed ledgers or shared data structure is used. The number of patients is continually increasing, and it requires a system that would be able to keep track of a decentralized record of each patient, but at the same time, it should be able to scale to the proportions necessary for handling the increasing network throughput. Our approach from this study is to provide a new enhanced secure and trustable network platform between care providers and patients by sharing data using Tangle, where data is structured using a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) to store its EHRs ledger, with the primary motivation of being scalable.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Dubovitskaya, A., Xu, Z., Ryu, S., Schumacher, M., Wang, F.: Secure and trustable electronic medical records sharing using blockchain (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Freeman, G., Hughes, J.: Continuity of care and the patient experience. King’s Fund, p. 24 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N., Scarfone, K.: Blockchain technology overview (NISTIR-8202), p. 59 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Weiner, J.: The Tangle. New Yorker 81(8), 43–51 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Liang, X., Zhao, J., Shetty, S., Liu, J., Li, D.: Integrating blockchain for data sharing and collaboration in mobile healthcare applications. In: IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, PIMRC, vol. 2017, pp. 1–5, October 2018

    Google Scholar 

  6. Milbank Memorial Fund: The Impact of Primary Care Practice Transformation on Cost, Quality, and Utilization | A Systematic Review of Research Published in 2016. Patient-Centered Prim. Care Collab. Robert Graham Cent., July 2017

    Google Scholar 

  7. Kitty, J.P.W., Chan, S., Fowles, J.B.: Electronic health records and the reliability and validity of quality measures: a review of the literature (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Landy, D.J.: Figure 1. https://figure1.com/about/

  9. Tak, P., Liu, S.: Medical record system using blockchain. Big Data Tokenization 9977, 254–261 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Baran, P.: On distributed communication: introduction to distributed communication network (1964)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Ekblaw, A., Azaria, A., Halamka, J.D., Lippman, A., Original, I., Vieira, T.: A case study for blockchain in healthcare: “MedRec” prototype for electronic health records and medical research data MedRec: using blockchain for medical data access and permission management. IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., 1–13 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Wood, G.: Ethereum: a secure decentralised generalised transaction ledger. Ethereum Proj. Yellow Pap., pp. 1–32 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Tennant, L.: Improving the anonymity of the IOTA cryptocurrency, pp. 1–20 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Kusmierz, B., Staupe, P., Gal, A.: Extracting Tangle properties in continuous time via large-scale simulations (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Kusmierz, B.: The first glance at the simulation of the Tangle: discrete model, pp. 1–10 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Poon, J., Dryja, T.: The Bitcoin lightning network: scalable off-chain instant payments. Technical report, p. 59 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  17. BitFury Group: Proof of stake versus proof of work, vol. 2015, pp. 1–26 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Ekblaw, A., Azaria, A.: MedRec: medical data management on the blockchain our motivation approach from fragmented access to comprehensive access, pp. 1–16 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  19. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Headquarters: Use of Blockchain in Healthcare and Research Workshop. https://oncprojectracking.healthit.gov/wiki/display/TechLabI/Use+of+Blockchain+in+Healthcare+and+Research+Workshop. Accessed 27 Sept 2016

  20. da Conceição, A.F., da Silva, F.S.C., Rocha, V., Locoro, A., Barguil, J.M.: Electronic health records using blockchain technology (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Popov, S., Saa, O., Finardi, P.: Equilibria in the Tangle, pp. 1–30 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Popov, S.: Local modifiers in the Tangle, pp. 1–10 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Fernandes, L., O’Connor, M.: Future of Patient Identification (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Lauster, C.D., Srivastava, S.B.: Fundamental Skills for Patient Care in Pharmacy Practice (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  25. quizlet.com: Components of a Medical Record. https://quizlet.com/25245535/components-of-a-medical-record-flash-cards/

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Emil Saweros or Yeong-Tae Song .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Saweros, E., Song, YT. (2019). Connecting Heterogeneous Electronic Health Record Systems Using Tangle. In: Lee, S., Ismail, R., Choo, H. (eds) Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Ubiquitous Information Management and Communication (IMCOM) 2019. IMCOM 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 935. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19063-7_68

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics