Abstract
Blockchain applications are regarded as a disruptive technology in the health area for working in a decentralized manner, with inherited features such as immutability, privacy, scalability, and security, and with users managing their data. We present a software architecture based on blockchain and a document-oriented database to manage and store electronic health records (EHRs). This software architecture was designed and implemented to manage EHRs of patients in the process of motor function recovery and assist the research on virtual reality and neurofunctional recovery (BRAINN_VR) at the Brazilian Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology (BRAINN). This solution allows BRAINN_VR researchers to analyze data while respecting the patient’s privacy. We evaluate the network performance of our solution to validate EHR insertions using four scenarios with varying data block size, network latency, and jitter. The consensus performance reached shows the feasibility of our architecture. Our software architecture has the potential to provide seamless interaction between multi-institutional research laboratories, health institutions, and patients.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Abu-elezz, I., Hassan, A., Nazeemudeen, A., Househ, M., Abd-alrazaq, A.: The benefits and threats of blockchain technology in healthcare: A scoping review. Int. J. Med. Inform. 142, 104246 (Oct 2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104246, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386505620301544
Agbo, C.C., Mahmoud, Q.H., Eklund, J.M.: Blockchain Technology in Healthcare: A Systematic Review. Healthcare 7(2), 56 (Jun 2019). https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare7020056, https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/7/2/56, number: 2 Publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Alsunaidi, S.J., Alhaidari, F.A.: A Survey of Consensus Algorithms for Blockchain Technology. In: 2019 International Conference on Computer and Information Sciences (ICCIS), pp. 1–6 (Apr 2019). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCISci.2019.8716424
Amatayakul, M.K.: Electronic Health Records: A Practical Guide for Professionals and Organizations. Ahima, Chicago, Ill., 5th 2013 update ed. edition edn. (Apr 2013)
Azaria, A., Ekblaw, A., Vieira, T., Lippman, A.: MedRec: Using Blockchain for Medical Data Access and Permission Management. In: 2016 2nd International Conference on Open and Big Data (OBD), pp. 25–30. IEEE, Vienna, Austria (Aug 2016). https://doi.org/10.1109/OBD.2016.11, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7573685/
Bashir, I.: Mastering Blockchain: A deep dive into distributed ledgers, consensus protocols, smart contracts, DApps, cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, and more, 3rd Edition. Packt Publishing (Aug 2020)
Bass, L., Clements, P., Kazman, R.: Software Architecture in Practice. Addison-Wesley Professional, fourth edn. (2021)
Ceptro.br, Nic.br: Covid-19 Impacto na qualidade da internet no Brasil. Tech. rep., CEPTRO.BR/NIC.br (May 2021), https://www.ceptro.br/assets/publicacoes/pdf/2021.01.05-relatorio-covid.pdf
Chondros, N., Kokordelis, K., Roussopoulos, M.: On the Practicality of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance. In: Narasimhan, P., Triantafillou, P. (eds.) Middleware 2012, pp. 436–455. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2012). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35170-9_22
Dimitrov, D.V.: Blockchain Applications for Healthcare Data Management. Healthcare Inform. Res. 25(1), 51–56 (Jan 2019). https://doi.org/10.4258/hir.2019.25.1.51, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6372466/
Fennelly, O., et al.: Successfully implementing a national electronic health record: a rapid umbrella review. International Journal of Medical Informatics 144, 104281 (Dec 2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104281, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1386505620310650
Gervais, A., Karame, G.O., Wüst, K., Glykantzis, V., Ritzdorf, H., Capkun, S.: On the security and performance of proof of work blockchains. In: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security. p. 3–16. CCS ’16, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (2016). https://doi.org/10.1145/2976749.2978341
Gesulga, J.M., Berjame, A., Moquiala, K.S., Galido, A.: Barriers to electronic health record system implementation and information systems resources: a structured review. Procedia Comput. Sci. 124, 544–551 (Jan 2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2017.12.188https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050917329563
Hölbl, M., Kompara, M., Kamišalić, A., Nemec Zlatolas, L.: A Systematic Review of the Use of Blockchain in Healthcare. Symmetry 10(10), 470 (Oct 2018). https://doi.org/10.3390/sym10100470, https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/10/10/470 number: 10 Publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
Karafiloski, E., Mishev, A.: Blockchain solutions for big data challenges: A literature review. In: IEEE EUROCON 2017–17th International Conference on Smart Technologies, pp. 763–768 (Jul 2017). https://doi.org/10.1109/EUROCON.2017.8011213
Kassab, M., et al.: Exploring research in blockchain for healthcare and a roadmap for the future. IEEE Trans. Emerg. Top. Comput. 9(4), 1835–1852 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2019.2936881
Kumar, M., Chand, S.: Medhypchain: A patient-centered interoperability hyperledger-based medical healthcare system: Regulation in covid-19 pandemic. J. Netw. Comput. Appl. 179, 102975 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2021.102975, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804521000023
Kuo, T.T., Kim, H.E., Ohno-Machado, L.: Blockchain distributed ledger technologies for biomedical and health care applications. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc.: JAMIA 24(6), 1211–1220 (November 2017). https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocx068, https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC6080687
Mconaghy, T., et al.: BigchainDB: a scalable blockchain database. Whitepaper 1(1), 65 (2016)
McGhin, T., Choo, K.K.R., Liu, C.Z., He, D.: Blockchain in healthcare applications: Research challenges and opportunities. J. Netw. Comput. Appl. 135, 62–75 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2019.02.027, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1084804519300864
Omar, A.A., Bhuiyan, M.Z.A., Basu, A., Kiyomoto, S., Rahman, M.S.: Privacy-friendly platform for healthcare data in cloud based on blockchain environment. Future Gen. Comput. Syst. 95, 511–521 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2018.12.044, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X18314201
Roehrs, A., da Costa, C.A., da Rosa Righi, R., da Silva, V.F., Goldim, J.R., Schmidt, D.C.: Analyzing the performance of a blockchain-based personal health record implementation. J. Biomed. Inform. 92, 103140 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2019.103140, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1532046419300589
Ruan, P., et al.: Blockchains vs. Distributed Databases: Dichotomy and Fusion. In: ACM SIGMOD p. 14 (2021)
Swan, M.: Blockchain : blueprint for a new economy. O’Reilly Media, Sebastopol, Calif. (2015) http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920037040.do
Wang, J., et a.: A blockchain-based eHealthcare system interoperating with WBANs. Future Generation Computer Systems 110, 675–685 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2019.09.049, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167739X19321247
Zhang, P., Schmidt, D.C., White, J., Lenz, G.: Blockchain Technology Use Cases in Healthcare - Chapter One. In: Raj, P., Deka, G.C. (eds.) Advances in Computers, Blockchain Technology: Platforms, Tools and Use Cases, vol. 111, pp. 1–41. Elsevier (Jan 2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adcom.2018.03.006, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065245818300196
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Leoratto, T., Dias, D.R.C., Brandão, A.F., Iope, R.L., Brega, J.R.F., de Paiva Guimarães, M. (2023). A Software Architecture Based on the Blockchain-Database Hybrid for Electronic Health Records. In: Gervasi, O., et al. Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2023. ICCSA 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13956 . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36805-9_33
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36805-9_33
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-36804-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-36805-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)