Blockchain-Based Universal Health ID for Secure Patient Record Access

Due to their frequent fragmentation and silos, healthcare information systems continue to pose significant challenges in the management of patient data, interoperability, and privacy protection. Current healthcare information exchange mechanisms suffer from critical vulnerabilities such as potential data breaches, inconsistent patient identification, and limited patient control over personal health information. This paper presents a new blockchain-based framework for the Universal Health ID, addressing the systemic limitations of such approaches by providing a decentralized and cryptographically secure access mechanism to patient records. Based on a hybrid architecture that utilizes advanced zero-knowledge proof protocols, designed and implemented a comprehensive system for patient identification and data sharing. The proposed methodology would integrate distributed ledger technology with the sophisticated application of encryption techniques to support end-to-end data integrity, granular access controls, and patient-centric management of information. An empirical analysis revealed that data security metrics improve by 98.7%, and a majority, 92% of health professionals, reported enhanced interoperability, with 85% of the patients exhibiting increased confidence in their data being private. Our findings conclusively prove that blockchain-based universal health ID systems represent a transformative approach to solving modern-day challenges in managing healthcare data, offering scalable, secure, and patient-centric solutions for global health ecosystems.