Health Records over Blockchains

It is hard to understate the critical role access to a patient’s comprehensive medical history plays in diagnosing (and treating) patient illness. For a doctor, knowing the latest prescribed drugs of his patient might, for example, point directly to the cause of an illness — which might be just a drug side effect. Yet patients often do not know the names of the drugs they take or even the dates of surgeries and other medical procedures.

A Health register covers the entire log of patient medical treatments, from surgeries through periodic health check-ups and other medical interventions. These records are commonly paper registers, smart cards or online private databases, often owned by hospitals, and not always available on need. Publicly sharing these databases could address the problem — but it would create a new one by violating personal privacy (and Canadian privacy laws).

This project intends to employ blockchain technology to develop a platform that can integrate health registers and enable hospitals and other medical service providers to access health registers securely and promptly. Notwithstanding, the technology we are going to develop is applicable in various research fields.

Faculty Supervisor:

Chen Feng

Student:

Mohamad-Jaafar Ahmad Nehme

Partner:

Boehringer-Ingelheim Canada Ltd

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

University:

University of British Columbia

Program: