Using Ethereum Smart Contracts to Store and Share COVID-19 Patient Data

Introduction The emergence and rapid spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have revealed the limitations in current healthcare systems to handle patient records securely and transparently, and novel protocols are required to address these shortcomings. An attractive option is the use of Ethereum smart contracts to secure the storage of medical records and concomitant data logs. Ethereum is an open-source platform that can be used to construct smart contracts, which are collections of code that allow transactions under certain parameters and are self-executable. Methods The present study developed a proof-of-concept smart contract that stores COVID-19 patient data such as the patient identifier (ID), variant, chest CT grade, and significant comorbidities. A sample, fictitious patient data for the purpose of testing was configured to a private network. A smart contract was created in the Ethereum state and tested by measuring the time to insert and query patient data. Results Testing with a private, Proof of Authority (PoA) network required only 191 milliseconds and 890 MB of memory per insertion to insert 50 records while inserting 350 records required 674 milliseconds and similar memory per insertion, as memory per insertion was nearly constant with the increasing number of records inserted. Retrieving required 912 MB for a query involving all three fields and no wildcards in a 350-record database. Only 883 MB was needed to procure a similar observation from a 50-record database. Conclusion This study exemplifies the use of smart contracts for efficient retrieval/insertion of COVID-19 patient data and provides a case use of secure and efficient data logging for sensitive COVID-19 data.