LifeChain: Organ Donation and Transplantation System Using Blockchain

Organ transplantation can save countless lives with the help of organs from brain-dead patients or living donors. The need for organ donation is continuously increasing but the malpractices and corruption in the organ donation and transplantation system have kept this industry from realizing its true impact and potential. The current organ donation industry suffers from various challenges like fragmented databases and data, communication gaps, the existence of a common discovery platform, and malpractices that prevent the reaching of appropriate organs to deserving recipients. This paper attempts to solve these issues by utilizing blockchain technology. By utilizing the concepts of blockchain technology in “LifeChain”, we aim to introduce transparency and efficiency. It will also provide a common database and discovery platform for both organ donors and recipients who can then easily find and donate organs well within geographical and time-sensitive domains. “LifeChain” will enhance the data consistency and will further help in analyzing the trends and statistics in organ donation and transplantation domain. The security that it will inherit from blockchain technology will prevent the tampering of data and secure electronic health records. This paper will explore the challenges and opportunities of implementing this blockchain-based solution.