VerifyMed -- A blockchain platform for transparent trust in virtualized healthcare: Proof-of-concept

TL;DR

VerifyMed is a blockchain-based platform that enhances trust in virtual healthcare by transparently validating medical professionals' credentials and competence, using Ethereum to ensure low-cost, verifiable interactions.

Contribution

The paper introduces VerifyMed, the first proof-of-concept blockchain platform for validating healthcare professional credentials and competence in virtual healthcare settings.

Findings

Cost to create and approve a treatment contract is around 1 USD.

Evaluating a treatment costs approximately 50 cents.

Simulations demonstrate platform's effectiveness and low operational costs.

Abstract

Patients living in a digitized world can now interact with medical professionals through online services such as chat applications, video conferencing or indirectly through consulting services. These applications need to tackle several fundamental trust issues: 1. Checking and confirming that the person they are interacting with is a real person; 2. Validating that the healthcare professional has competence within the field in question; and 3. Confirming that the healthcare professional has a valid license to practice. In this paper, we present VerifyMed -- the first proof-of-concept platform, built on Ethereum, for transparently validating the authorization and competence of medical professionals using blockchain technology. Our platform models trust relationships within the healthcare industry to validate professional clinical authorization. Furthermore, it enables a healthcare professional to build a portfolio of real-life work experience and further validates the competence by storing outcome metrics reported by the patients. The extensive realistic simulations show that with our platform, an average cost for creating a smart contract for a treatment and getting it approved is around 1 USD, and the cost for evaluating a treatment is around 50 cents.