DASS-CARE: A Decentralized, Accessible, Scalable, and Secure Healthcare Framework using Blockchain

The healthcare industry is a complex system of interconnected entities. Each of these entities has disjoint information systems to manage patient data and records. The current IT solutions in healthcare systems have several challenges such as sharing and accessing medical records across several stakeholders while still maintaining security and privacy of these records. This global problem on how to create, maintain, and share sensitive medical records and clinical data among various stakeholders without sacrificing data privacy and integrity is still unresolved. In fact, existing healthcare records are decentralized, disjointed, non-uniform, and fragmented in nature. In this paper, we present a Blockchain-based framework, called DASS-CARE, that supports decentralized, accessible, scalable, and secure access to healthcare services including medical records. Such framework will greatly facilitate the process of real time access and updates without compromising security, integrity and confidentiality of patient data. Our objective is multifold. First, improve the quality of healthcare and lower the cost of delivery. Second, enhance medical records management including electronic health records unification. Finally, provide users with the ability to view their medical records regardless of their history, a task that is difficult to accomplish under the current fragmented systems.