Open Access

ARTICLE

Hyperledger Fabric Blockchain: Secure and Efficient Solution for Electronic Health Records

Mueen Uddin^1,*, M. S. Memon², Irfana Memon², Imtiaz Ali², Jamshed Memon³, Maha Abdelhaq⁴, Raed Alsaqour⁵

1 Faculty of Science, Universiti Brunei Darusslam, Gadong, BE1410, Negara Brunei Darussalam
2 CSE Department, QUEST, Nawabshah, Pakistan
3 School of Computing and Mathematics, Ulster University, Jordanstown Campus, Newtownabbey, BT37 0QB, UK
4 Department of Information Technology, College of Computer and Information Sciences, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, 84428, Saudi Arabia
5 Department of Information Technology, College of Computing and Informatics, Saudi Electronic University, Riyadh, 93499, Saudi Arabia

* Corresponding Author: Mueen Uddin. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: AI, IoT, Blockchain Assisted Intelligent Solutions to Medical and Healthcare Systems)

Computers, Materials & Continua 2021, 68(2), 2377-2397. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmc.2021.015354

Received 17 November 2020; Accepted 15 February 2021; Issue published 13 April 2021

Abstract

Background: Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems are used as an efficient and effective technique for sharing patient’s health records among different hospitals and various other key stakeholders of the healthcare industry to achieve better diagnosis and treatment of patients globally. However, the existing EHR systems mostly lack in providing appropriate security, entrusted access control and handling privacy and secrecy issues and challenges in current hospital infrastructures. Objective: To solve this delicate problem, we propose a Blockchain-enabled Hyperledger Fabric Architecture for different EHR systems. Methodology: In our EHR blockchain system, Peer nodes from various organizations (stakeholders) create a ledger network, where channels are created to enable secure and private communication between different stakeholders on the ledger network. Individual patients and other stakeholders are identified and registered on the network by unique digital certificates issued by membership service provider (MSP) component of the fabric architecture. Results: We created and implemented different Chaincodes to handle the business logic for executing separate EHR transactions on the network. The proposed fabric architecture provides a secure, transparent and immutable mechanism to store, share and exchange EHRs in a peer-to-peer network of different healthcare stakeholders. It ensures interoperability, scalability and availability in adapting the existing EHRs for strengthening and providing an effective and secure method to integrate and manage patient records among medical institutions in the healthcare ecosystem.

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Citations