Application of Blockchain in Healthcare and Health Insurance Sector

TL;DR

This paper presents a blockchain-based healthcare system that enhances transparency, trust, and privacy for patients, hospitals, and insurers, with a prototype implementation on Ethereum.

Contribution

It introduces a novel blockchain-enabled healthcare model ensuring fairness, data privacy, and secure data sharing, which has not been extensively explored before.

Findings

Prototype implemented on Ethereum platform and Ropsten test network.

System guarantees fairness and trust among all entities.

Ensures privacy-preserving data sharing for research purposes.

Abstract

Technology has evolved over the years, making our lives easier. It has impacted the healthcare sector, increasing the average life expectancy of human beings. Still, there are gaps that remain unaddressed. There is a lack of transparency in the healthcare system, which results in inherent trust problems between patients and hospitals. In the present day, a patient does not know whether he or she will get the proper treatment from the hospital for the fee charged. A patient can claim reimbursement of the medical bill from any insurance company. However, today there is minimal scope for the Insurance Company to verify the validity of such bills or medical records. A patient can provide fake details to get financial benefits from the insurance company. Again, there are trust issues between the patient (i.e., the insurance claimer) and the insurance company. Blockchain integrated with the smart contract is a well-known disruptive technology that builds trust by providing transparency to the system. In this paper, we propose a blockchain-enabled Secure and Smart HealthCare System. Fairness of all the entities: patient, hospital, or insurance company involved in the system is guaranteed with no one trusting each other. Privacy and security of patients' medical data are ensured as well. We also propose a method for privacy-preserving sharing of aggregated data with the research community for their own purpose. Shared data must not be personally identifiable, i.e, no one can link the acquired data to the identity of any patient or their medical history. We have implemented the prototype in the Ethereum platform and Ropsten test network, and have included the analysis as well.