Design of a Blockchain Plugin for Secure Electronic Medical Records

In this paper, we explored the potential of developing a lightweight plugin tool to enhance existing electronic medical records (EMRs) systems with blockchain technologies. The national patient information management systems (i.e., My Health Record in Australia) and other EMRs hosted by different medical service providers comprise the blockchain network through pre-defined port. Access control and medical data sharing among patients and medical professionals are managed within the blockchain network, while interactions between users and their affiliated organizations are still conducted via existing EMRs. To improve the security of the blockchain network, we propose the use of a globally unique identifier (GUID) for locating user information and preventing sensitive information from being transparently available on the Internet. Access control is decentralized through blockchain transactions, and servers in the EMR systems check access control records before sending medical data to authorized users. Each transaction includes a digital signature to verify authenticity and a chain of blocks with the previous header hash, Merkle root hash, and proof-of-work (PoW) to ensure data integrity. We used the Django framework and Python to develop four simulation servers and a plugin package to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposal. The study shows that the proposed approach is a practical, lightweight, and cost-effective method to enhance medical data security and access control in existing EMRs.