Blockchain-Based Architecture Design for Personal Health Record: Development and Usability Study.

Area of Science:

• Distributed ledger technology
• Health informatics
• Blockchain applications

Background:

• Blockchain architectures offer potential for patient control over personal health records (PHR).
• Existing research often describes blockchain models for PHR without assessing their feasibility and robustness for widespread adoption.
• Ensuring patient data control is a key goal for blockchain-based PHR systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel ledger-oriented architecture for a secure and manageable personal health record system.
• To assess the feasibility and performance of a permissioned distributed network for PHR management.
• To emphasize the need for standardized metrics in evaluating blockchain networks for healthcare.

Main Methods:

• Implemented a blockchain-based PHR architecture using Hyperledger Fabric.
• Utilized Hyperledger Caliper for performance assessment under varying workloads and network sizes.
• Measured throughput (transactions per second) and average latency as key performance indicators.

Main Results:

• Write operations achieved throughputs around 10^2 tps and latencies of 10^1 seconds in a 3-peer network.
• Read operations demonstrated higher throughputs (up to 10^3 tps) and lower latencies (around 10^0 seconds).
• Increasing network size from 3 to 13 peers reduced write throughput to 10^1 tps and increased latency to 10^2 seconds.

Conclusions:

• This is the first evaluation of a PHR blockchain architecture's performance using Hyperledger Caliper, including individual smart contract analysis.
• Current blockchain systems exhibit performance significantly lower than traditional distributed databases for PHR.
• Further assessment and optimization are crucial before deploying blockchain solutions for personal health records in production environments.