Blockchain Empowered Personal Health Records: Enhancing Security, Privacy, and Interoperability in Healthcare Management

Abstract

Thisresearch paper investigates how blockchain technology is being used in the medical industry, focusing on personal wellbeing record applications that is personal health record (PHR) applications. Conventional approaches to storing essential medical information are security and privacy risks, which prompted the proposal for a decentralized medical data exchange and storage system built on a hospital\'s open blockchain.. The aim of the paper is to develop a private, secure, and patient-focused system that provides improved data security, privacy protection, and accessibility in healthcare management. The study explores the difficulties of hospitals to securely store and share medical information using traditional approaches and presents the weaknesses of centralized digital health record systems. Using blockchain technologies, this research presents a revolutionary solution that not only solves these issues but also provides a scalable and efficient system for healthcare data management.

Introduction

1. Overview and Motivation

Blockchain technology, originally known for powering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is now being explored for secure and transparent healthcare data management. Centralized systems for storing personal health records (PHRs) face serious challenges, including:

• Data breaches and hacking vulnerabilities

• Lack of privacy control for patients

• Poor interoperability across healthcare providers

These issues necessitate a decentralized, secure, and patient-centric solution for managing sensitive medical data.

2. Role of Blockchain in Healthcare

Blockchain provides a tamper-resistant, decentralized, and cryptographically secure system that enables:

• Protected sharing of patient records among multiple healthcare providers

• Data integrity through immutable and timestamped entries

• Patient privacy and control, allowing users to grant/revoke access

• Interoperability for seamless data exchange

This paper proposes a blockchain-based PHR platform leveraging Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized storage mechanisms like IPFS to overcome the shortcomings of traditional PHR systems.

3. Key Benefits

• High data security and resistance to tampering

• User-centric privacy controls for selective data sharing

• Efficient emergency access to patient data in real time

• Improved interoperability between healthcare systems

• Scalability and performance using off-chain data storage (e.g., IPFS)

• Compliance with legal frameworks like HIPAA

4. Proposed System Architecture

The system consists of:

• A browser-based frontend (SPA) built with React

• Integration with MetaMask for transaction signing

• Use of Infura as an Ethereum node provider

• Deployment of four smart contracts:

  • Patient Contract: Stores basic patient data

  • Doctor Contract: Stores doctor credentials

  • Hospital Contract: Stores facility information

  • Medical Record Contract: Holds detailed health records

5. Project Objectives

The project aims to:

1. Ensure secure and private data management using encryption and digital signatures.

2. Enable patient-controlled sharing of medical records with doctors.

3. Provide fast, real-time access to PHRs during emergencies.

4. Develop a responsive frontend for ease of use by patients and healthcare providers.

5. Build a backend using Solidity & Web3.js, with Ethereum as the main database.

6. Incorporate scalable storage via IPFS for handling large medical files.

7. Enhance system performance to handle high traffic and data volume.

8. Integrate AI, IoT, and edge computing for predictive analytics and real-time monitoring.

9. Ensure regulatory compliance (e.g., HIPAA, ISO, HL7).

10. Support user training and continuous improvement for long-term viability and adoption.

6. Comparative Study

A table compared the proposed blockchain-based PHR system with previous approaches:

7. Challenges and Future Work

While blockchain offers significant improvements, the system must address:

• Scalability of blockchain networks

• Data standardization and compliance

• Integration with existing healthcare systems

• User onboarding and education
  Future directions include integration with AI, IoT, and edge computing for advanced data analytics, smart diagnosis, and scalable, real-time health monitoring.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the proposed blockchainbased personal health record (PHR) management system offers a feasible and innovative solution to address the challenges of traditional healthcare data management. By leveraging blockchain technology and integrating the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) for offchain storage, the system ensures enhanced security, scalability, and interoperability of PHR data. The implementation of wallet address authentication and robust infrastructure further strengthens the security of user records, mitigating the risks of unauthorized access and data breaches. Additionally, the scalability of the system is enhanced by leveraging IPFS for storing heavy files, allowing for efficient handling of large volumes of PHR data. Overall, the proposed system represents a significant advancement in healthcare data management, providing a secure, scalable, and usercentric platform for managing personal health records while ensuring data integrity, privacy, and accessibility.

References

[1] Rahmadika, Sandi, and Kyung-hyune Rhee. \"Blockchain technology for providing an architecture model of decentralized personal health information.\" (2018). [2] Reen, GaganjeetSingh,ManasiMohandas,andS. Venkatesan. \"Decentralized Patient Centric e- Health RecordManagementSystemusingBlockchainandIPFS.\" (2020). [3] Siyal, Asad Ali, Aisha ZahidJunejo, Muhammad Zawish, Kainat Ahmed, Aiman Khalil, and Georgia Soursou. \"Exploiting 5G and Blockchain for Medical Applications of Drones.\" (2021). [4] Wang, Baocheng, and Zetao Li. \"Healthchain: A Privacy Protection System for Medical Data Based on Blockchain.\" (2021). [5] Golosova, Julija, and Andrejs Romanovs. \"The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Blockchain Technology.\" (2018). [6] Baygin,Nursena,MehmetBaygin,andMehmet Karakose. \"Blockchain Technology: Applications, Benefits and Challenges.\" (2019). [7] Abdullah Al Mamun, Sami Azam, Clementine Gritti. “Blockchain-Based Electronic Health Records Management: A comprehensive review and future research direction”. (2022).

Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Vedant Jha, Abhishek Maurya, Vansh Baghel, Dr. Sangeeta Vhatkar . 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.