The healthcare system in the United States is unique. From payor to provider, patients have the freedom of choice. This creates a complicated and profitable paradigm of care. Legislation defines government expectations of data exchange; however, the methods are left to the discretion of the stakeholders. Today, devices and programs are not built to unified standards, thus they do not share data easily. This communication between software is known as interoperability. We address the health data interoperability by leveraging Fast Health Interoperable Resource (FHIR) standard, a viewer of FHIR called OpenPharma, and Blockchain technology. Our proof of concept, called “OpenPharma Blockchain on FHIR” (OBF), is interoperable by design and grants clinicians access to patient records using a combination of data standards, distributed applications, patient-driven identity management, and the Ethereum blockchain. OBF is a trustless, secure, decentralized, and vendor-independent method for information exchange. It is easy to implement and places the control of records with the patients.
Kim D, Kagel JH, Tayal N, Bose-Brill S, Lai A. The Effects of Doctor-Patient Portal Use on Health Care Utilization Rates and Cost Savings. SSRN Electronic Journal. 2017;
2.
Linn L, Koo M. Blockchain for health data and its potential use in health it and health care related research. :1–10.
3.
2019;
4.
Blumenthal D, Tavenner M. The “meaningful use” regulation for electronic health records. N Engl J Med. 2010;(6):501–4.
5.
Carter G, Chevellereau B, Shahriar H, Sneha S. OpenPharma Blockchain on FHIR: An Interoperable Solution for Read-Only Health Records Exchange through Blockchain and Biometrics. Blockchain in Healthcare Today. 2020;
6.
Bosworth HB, Zullig LL, Mendys P, Ho M, Trygstad T, Granger C, et al. Health Information Technology: Meaningful Use and Next Steps to Improving Electronic Facilitation of Medication Adherence. JMIR Medical Informatics. 2016;4(1):e9.
7.
Opara-Martins J, Sahandi R, Tian F. Critical analysis of vendor lock-in and its impact on cloud computing migration: A business perspective. J Cloud Comput. 2016;(1):4.
8.
Chang J. The dark cloud of convenience: How the HIPAA omnibus rules fail to protect electronic personal information. Loy LA Ent L Rev. 2013;119.
9.
Salahuddin M, Al-Fuqaha A, Guizani M, Shuaib K, Sallabi F. Softwarization of Internet of things infrastructure for secure and smart healthcare. 2018;
10.
Anjum A, Sporny M, Sill A. Blockchain standards for compliance and trust. IEEE Cloud Comput. 2017;(4):84–90.
11.
CMS Center for Medicaid & Medicare Services. 2019;
12.
Leventhal R. Top Ten Tech Trends 2017: Blockchain’s promise has healthcare innovators eager. 2017;
13.
Sneha S, Varshney U. Enabling ubiquitous patient monitoring: Model, decision protocols, opportunities and challenges. Decis Support Syst. 2009;(3):606–19.
14.
Nye J. How blockchain could help boost healthcare security. 2017;
15.
Dhanireddy S, Walker J, Reisch L, Oster N, Delbanco T, Elmore J. The urban underserved: Attitudes towards gaining full access to electronic medical records. Health Expect. 2014;(5):724–32.
16.
Engelhardt M. Hitching healthcare to the chain: An introduction to blockchain technology in the healthcare sector. Tech Innovat Manag Rev. 2017;(10):22–34.
17.
Bender D, Sartipi K. HL7 FHIR: An Agile and RESTful approach to healthcare information exchange. Proceedings of the 26th IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems. IEEE; 2013. p. 326–31.
18.
H. Chaballout B, J. Shaw R, Reuter-Rice K. The SMART healthcare solution. Advances in Precision Medicine. 2023;2(1).
19.
Ahuja S, Mani S, Zambrano J. A survey of the state of cloud computing in healthcare. Netw Commun Technol. 2012;(2):12.
20.
Walonoski J, Scanlon R, Dowling C, Hyland M, Ettema R, Posnack S. Validation and Testing of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Standards Compliance: Data Analysis. JMIR Medical Informatics. 2018;6(4):e10870.
Citation
Copyright
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The statements, opinions and data contained in the journal are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publisher and the editor(s). We stay neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
