Blockchain and Health Registries

The escalating accumulation of health data in health care registries, alongside efforts to integrate and share data across registries, offers a promising avenue for advancing medical research. However, this trend also amplifies privacy vulnerabilities in the event of security breaches. High-profile instances of leaked medical records underscore the urgent need for resilient digital trust frameworks in eHealth, emphasizing the importance of innovative solutions to uphold data integrity, authenticity, and privacy compliance. The primary objective in this project was to facilitate solutions to the challenges of secure data sharing that healthcare registries are facing today. We were aiming to achieve this objective by leveraging on the rapidly developing technology of blockchain and smart contracts.

Our principal approach was to facilitate solutions for health registries by using Smart Contracts and the emerging Blockchain Paradigm. From the data safety, authenticity, and nonrepudiation standpoint, blockchain is a perfect fit for sharing medical data since it provides an easily accessible, immutable, and transparent history of all contract-related data, adequate for building applications with trust and accountability. Use of smart contracts brings a number of additional advantages for sharing medical data by healthcare registries: consent management, fine-grain privacy control, transparency, and reduced bureaucracy and expenses.

The SmartMed project has investigated the benefits and challenges of applying blockchain technology and smart contracts in the domain of healthcare data storage through a number of publications. We have developed techniques for addressing specific privacy and security risks through the use of blockchain technology. In particular, we have designed a system for blockchain-assisted consent management compliant with data protection rules and regulations, such as GDPR and HIPAA. The resulting prototype has been deployed at the Cancer Registry of Norway. Additionally, we have investigated software engineering aspects of blockchain-based solutions in this context. Thus, the project has successfully adhered to the stated goals and completed the declared objectives.

Link to more detailed information:

Smartmed - secure and accountable sharing of medical records using smart contracts and blockchain.