Almohana Albatoul, Almomani Iman, El-Shafai Walid
Security Engineering Lab, Computer Science Department, Prince Sultan University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Computer Science Department, King Abdullah II School of Information Technology, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan.
PLoS One. 2024 Dec 2;19(12):e0310603. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0310603. eCollection 2024.
The advent of blockchain technology within the healthcare domain has signified a paradigm shift, transitioning from an emerging trend to an essential infrastructure component that ensures decentralization, transparency, integrity, and persistent availability. Despite its potential, the healthcare sector has not fully capitalized on the vast array of benefits blockchain technology offers. Most existing works utilized blockchain technology within a specific healthcare entity's services but not among several healthcare organizations. They notably lack the provision for direct communication and knowledge transfer between doctors from different hospitals. Therefore, this paper introduces a pioneering Blockchain-based Unified Medical Consultancy Service (B-UMCS) that leverages blockchain's robustness to revolutionize telehealth services by (a) alleviating the shortage of medical expertise through facilitating the interconnection of physicians from diverse hospitals and geographical areas onto a consolidated platform, (b) promoting the seamless sharing of medical consultations, electronic health records (EHRs), and expert insights while upholding rigorous security and privacy protocols, (c) integrating the inherent security mechanisms of blockchain with the distributed data storage functionality offered by the Interplanetary File System (IPFS). This work details the B-UMCS's components, interactions, smart contracts, protocols, algorithms, storage and transmission of EHRs, and their corresponding implementations. The evaluations of the proposed B-UMCS reveal that it secures and facilitates the sharing of EHRs and enables healthcare professionals to collaborate and exchange expertise seamlessly across institutional boundaries. They are additionally ensuring that healthcare providers can offer their knowledge in an efficient and scalable manner. Overall, B-UMCS not only addresses the current challenges in healthcare data security and accessibility but also opens new avenues for collaboration and knowledge sharing among healthcare professionals, ultimately contributing to improving patient care quality.
区块链技术在医疗领域的出现标志着一种范式转变,从一种新兴趋势转变为确保去中心化、透明性、完整性和持续可用性的关键基础设施组件。尽管具有潜力,但医疗行业尚未充分利用区块链技术带来的众多好处。大多数现有工作在特定医疗实体的服务中使用区块链技术,而非在多个医疗组织之间。它们明显缺乏不同医院医生之间直接沟通和知识转移的机制。因此,本文引入了一种开创性的基于区块链的统一医疗咨询服务(B-UMCS),该服务利用区块链的稳健性来彻底改变远程医疗服务,具体方式如下:(a)通过促进不同医院和地理区域的医生在一个整合平台上互连,缓解医疗专业知识短缺的问题;(b)在坚持严格的安全和隐私协议的同时,促进医疗咨询、电子健康记录(EHR)和专家见解的无缝共享;(c)将区块链固有的安全机制与星际文件系统(IPFS)提供的分布式数据存储功能相结合。这项工作详细介绍了B-UMCS的组件、交互、智能合约、协议、算法、EHR的存储和传输及其相应实现。对所提出的B-UMCS的评估表明,它保障并促进了EHR的共享,使医疗专业人员能够跨机构界限无缝协作和交流专业知识。此外,还确保医疗服务提供者能够以高效且可扩展的方式提供他们的知识。总体而言,B-UMCS不仅解决了医疗数据安全和可访问性方面的当前挑战,还为医疗专业人员之间的协作和知识共享开辟了新途径,最终有助于提高患者护理质量。