Blockchain Applications in Healthcare

7Patient Data Privacy Using Blockchain

With rapid transformation in the healthcare industry, the enablement of Information Technology and digitalization of healthcare services has increased the use of electronic health records (EHRs) exponentially. On one side of a coin this has many advantages like enhancing patient care, more efficient record management, research advancement, etc., but the other side of the coin warns us about the complexity in maintaining anonymity of patient data and being compliant to the privacy laws and regulations. The interest of hackers is already moving towards the healthcare industry, and there have been so many events in past few years where patient data in large amounts has been breached and misused. Healthcare entities are trying to protect patient data; still, there are so many breaches, the actual reason is that most of the controls are towards data security and there are many times when we may believe that security controls also safeguard privacy, but it is not true, and this generates the gap. Multiple data privacy laws and some laws/standards specific to healthcare data like Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act of 2009, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), etc. provide various security and data privacy requirements which all healthcare entities need to comply with. These laws also provide various rights to the patients like consent, ...