A Permissioned Blockchain Approach to the Authorization Process in Electronic Health Records

In recent years, electronic health records (EHRs) have been subject to data breaches. The result of these data breaches indicates that the current EHRs infrastructure is no longer suitable for safeguarding health records. Blockchain technology has been evolving and could possibly improve the current EHRs infrastructure. Literature suggests that EHRs commonly utilize a role-based access control (RBAC) model. Permissioned blockchain technology could improve the authorization model by leveraging smart contracts and attribute-based access control. Hyperledger Fabric has been identified as a permissioned blockchain technology suited towards use-cases that require privacy. An experiment has been conducted with Hyperledger Fabric to illustrate the benefits permissioned blockchain technology could provide to EHRs. The result of the experiment revealed that permissioned blockchain technology could improve the authorization model used by traditional EHRs.