Volume 6, Issue 5, May – 2021 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology

ISSN No:-2456-2165

Health Information System

Using Blockchain Technology
Yash Chavan Amey Balekundri
Department of Computer Engineering Department of Computer Engineering
A. P. Shah Institute of Technology A. P. Shah Institute of Technology
Thane, India Thane, India

Hemanshu Bafna Hiten Bhatia

Department of Computer Engineering Department of Computer Engineering
A. P. Shah Institute of Technology A. P. Shah Institute of Technology
Thane, India Thane, India

Abstract:- In India majority of people use paper based Cost of Data Breach Study : Global Overview, which was
medical records. Storing, accessing and sharing these sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by Ponemon
paper based medical records is a difficult and time Institute, the data breach cost of healthcare industry was $380
consuming task. Also, there are chances of these papers per capita [5]. Medical data is very sensitive in social aspect, so
getting misplaced due to human errors or loss due to its confidentiality needs to be maintained.
natural calamities such as floods, fires etc. Medical data is
very sensitive in social aspect, so its confidentiality needs to In this paper we present a system which will solve all of
be maintained. As said ‘Health is Wealth’ so it is important the above discussed problems. This system will allow patients
to keep our medical records safe. This project focuses on to securely store, access and share their digital medical records
creating a system with the help of blockchain technology with doctors. In this system medical records will be stored
that uses digital medical records, which will enable digitally so paper based medical records will be completely
patients to easily and securely store, access their medical eliminated. Thereby eliminating the need to maintain multiple
records without the fear of it getting misplaced or lost and files and the risk of these papers getting misplaced due to
quickly share it with the doctors they trust. human errors or loss due to natural calamities. Security
concerns will also be taken care of, since the digital records
Keywords:- Blockchain, Digital Medical Records, Health will be stored and shared using blockchain technology.
Information System, Digital Healthcare.
Once the patients are registered, they can store and access
I. INTRODUCTION their digital medical records in the system. Whenever they feel
the need to share these records with doctors, they can search for
A majority of Indians are still using the conventional doctors in the system and can grant access of their records to
paper based medical records. These records are stored in files, them. Doctors will be able to see patients medical records only
once the file capacity is full a new file needs to be maintained; after the patients have granted access to them. Patients can also
maintaining multiple files is a very tedious task. If patients or revoke the access anytime. In this system entire control of
doctors need to access certain record, they will have to check medical records is with the patients, this increases the
multiple files and pages to find out what exactly they are participation of patients in the system, also confidentially of
looking for, this is a time consuming process. Whenever their digital medical records is maintained.
patients need to share their medical records with doctors, they
have to physically visit and hand over the files to doctors, II. LITERATURE REVIEW
travelling during sickness is a serious challenge for patients. As
said earlier storing, accessing and sharing paper based medical In the paper entitled “Towards Using Blockchain
records is both difficult and time consuming task. During an Technology for eHealth Data Access Management” the authors
emergency one cannot afford to waste time in accessing and have discussed specific problems and benefits associated with
sharing paper based medical records with doctors. blockchain technology for deployment of a secure and a
scalable solution to exchange medical records. Addressing
Some of the private hospitals have an Electronic Health eHealth application challenges, they have proposed an
Records (EHR) system, which allows their patients to store and architecture where patients are connected to medical sensors
share their medical records with doctors within that hospital. and blockchain through a data gateway, hospitals and doctors
However these systems may have security and privacy issues. are connected to eHealth blockchain with smart contract, also
According to 2016 Breach Barometer Report, with more than an off chain database is maintained. Authors have suggested to
one health data breach per day for entire year, these breaches use blockchain only as a tool to transfer a part of data or a
affected 27,314,647 patient records [4]. According to the 2017 pointer to where actual data is stored, because it is not feasible

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Volume 6, Issue 5, May – 2021 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
to store all the data on blockchain and it may result into poor
performance. So they have suggested to use IPFS as an off- Patient and Doctor are main entities in this system. Flow of
chain database [1]. these entities is explained further.

In the paper entitled “Health Record Management A. Patient :-

through Blockchain Technology” the authors have highlighted
the issue of data breaches which occurs due to centralised
approach of maintaining the health records. Since there are
high chances of this data being misused, authors have
suggested the need of a completely decentralized patient-
centered approach. With this patient-centered approach access
control rights are with the patient so data thefts can be
identified and data manipulation can be prevented. Authors
have proposed an idea of switching to a decentralized system
from a centralized system using blockchain technology. They
have suggested an approach in which a smart contract is
deployed which executes when both parties agree, considering
hospital admin and patients as two parties [2].

In the paper entitled “Health Information Exchange using

Blockchain Technology” the authors have proposed a Health
Information Exchange system which has entities such as
patient, doctor, hospital, pharmacist, insurance company,
Fig. 2. Patient system flow
research organization, emergency contact and patients private
blockchain network. The proposed system will provide a way
to store and share the health information in secured and 1. Patients need to register on the system first and then using
effective manner. Hyperledger Fabric is used to retain privacy correct credentials they need to log in to system.
in the system, as it provides a way to keep certain data private 2. If patients forget their password, they can reset it.
3. When a new patient is logging into the system for the very
from some users in network. Since all the access rights of
first time, they will be presented with ‘Basic Medical
electronic medical records are with patient, a backup access
Information’ once they fill it up they will be presented with
system is also provided, which will allow healthcare
their dashboard. From second time login onwards patients
professionals to access critical information by scanning IOT
will directly be presented with their dashboards.
device in case of any emergency situation [3].
4. Patients are provided with these features ‘Add Report’,
‘View Report’, ‘Access Doctor’, ‘Revoke Doctor’, ‘Basic
III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
Medical Information’, ‘My Account’ all these features are
This project provides a blockchain based solution for accessible through dashboard.
securely storing, accessing and sharing digital medical records 5. By selecting ‘Basic Medical Information’ patients can
with doctors. update this information.
6. When patients want to upload their medical records on the
system, they select ‘Add Report’. Patients will be provided
with an option to name the document/s and then upload it.
Once they upload, a preview of the entire document is
shown. Finally they need to click on ‘Submit’ in order to
upload the document/s on the system.
7. If patients need to view their already uploaded medical
records, they need to select ‘View Report’.
8. To share the medical records with doctors, patients need to
select ‘Access Doctor’. Patients will be provided with two
options to search the doctors. To directly search a specific
doctor, patients need to type email address or phone
number of that doctor and click on search. Other way to
search doctors include filters option, filter doctors by their
location and/or specialization. The filters search option
Fig. 1. High level use case provides search results of all the doctors according to
applied filters.
The technology stack of choice is HTML, CSS, 9. Once patients have found the required doctor, they need to
JavaScript for front-end development, Django for the back-end, select ‘Grant Access’ to grant medical reports access to that
SQL for database, Solidity for smart contract, IPFS for storing specific doctor. This will share complete patient profile
medical records and Matic Network as a test blockchain. The (Basic Medical Information + medical reports) with the
technology stack was selected due to its efficiency in doctor.
development and high performance quality.

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Volume 6, Issue 5, May – 2021 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
10. Unless patients grant access to doctors, no doctor will be Patient Dashboard shows a count of total reports
able to see any of the patients profile. Patients have entire uploaded and total number of doctors having access to those
control over their medical records so confidentiality of records.
medical records is maintained.
11. If at any moment patients feel to revoke the access of their
profile which they have currently granted to doctors, they
need to select ‘Revoke Doctor’ and then click on ‘Revoke
Access’.
12. Once the patients have granted access to doctors, every
time they add new medical records to system, these newly
added records are automatically shared with those doctors.
13. Patients can update their account information anytime by
selecting ‘My Account’.

B. Doctor :- Fig. 4. Patient Dashboard

In ‘Add Report’ patients can upload the records and give

appropriate names to those records. Before they submit any
record its preview will also be displayed on the screen.

Fig. 5. Add Report

All the records uploaded by patients will be visible to

Fig. 3. Doctor system flow
them in ‘View Report’ along with name, date and time of
upload.
1. Doctors need to register on the system first and then using
correct credentials they need to log in to system.
2. If doctors forget their password, they can reset it.
3. After login, doctors will be presented with their dashboard.
4. Doctors are provided with these features ‘View Patients’,
‘View Records’, ‘My Account’. All these features are
accessible through dashboard.
5. If no patients have granted access yet, doctors will not be
able to see anything in ‘View Patients’ and ‘View
Records’.
6. Only after patients have granted access to doctors, the
doctors will be able to see patients profile. To see patients
profile they need to select ‘View Patients’. Fig. 6. View Report
7. To view medical records they need to select ‘View
Records’. Then they need to select the patient name and In ‘Access Doctor’ profiles of all doctors present in the
click on show. Now they will be able to see all the medical city of that particular patient will be provided by default,
records uploaded by that particular patient till the date. patients can scroll and find a doctor. Patients are also provided
8. Doctors can update their account information anytime by with options to search a specific doctor by entering that
selecting ‘My Account’. doctor’s email address/phone number or they can search
doctors by using city and/or specialization filters. Once they
find the doctor, they need to click on ‘Grant Access’ to share
medical records with doctors.

IV. RESULTS

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Volume 6, Issue 5, May – 2021 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
Profile of all the patients who have granted access to that
specific doctor are visible in ‘View Patients’.

Fig. 7. Access Doctor

After granting the access, if patients want to revoke

access form any specific doctor they can easily do it in ‘Revoke Fig. 11. View Patients
Access’.
In ‘View Records’, by selecting patients name, doctors
can access their basic medical information and all the medical
records.

Fig. 8. Revoke Doctor

Patients can update their Basic Medical Information Fig. 12. View Records
whenever any changes occur.
V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

The world is already moving towards digital healthcare

and now it’s time for India to start this journey as well. In
proposed system, a blockchain based solution is provided
which will allow patients to securely store, access and share
their digital medical records with doctors. Patients have
complete ownership of their digital medical records, only they
decide who gets access to their medical records, this maintains
confidentiality. The Honourable Prime Minister of India
announced the launch of National Digital Health Mission
Fig. 9. Basic Medical Information (NDHM) on 74th Independence Day. We believe that our
project will serve as a small contribution towards NDHM of
On dashboard doctors can see the number of patients who India.
have granted them the access to their profile. All the features
provided to doctors are easily accessible through dashboard. As of now the proposed system only has two entities
patient and doctor. This system can be further expanded to
create a national health ecosystem that has multiple entities like
hospitals, clinics, labs, pharmacies, insurers, health tech
companies, regulators, program managers, state governments,
central government.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to express our special thanks of gratitude

to our project guide Prof. Pravin Adivarekar for his insightful
comments, helpful information and practical advice that have
helped us tremendously while working on this project. We
would also like to thank Department of Computer Engineering
Fig. 10. Doctor Dashboard

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Volume 6, Issue 5, May – 2021 International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology
ISSN No:-2456-2165
at A. P. Shah Institute of Technology, our friends and our
parents for their immense support and motivation.

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