Page 204 - Big Data Analytics for Intelligent Healthcare Management

CHAPTER

BLOCKCHAIN IN HEALTHCARE:

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS 8

† ‡
Md. Mehedi Hassan Onik*, Satyabrata Aich*, Jinhong Yang , Chul-Soo Kim*, Hee-Cheol Kim
Department of Computer Engineering, Inje University, Gimhae, South Korea* Department of Healthcare
†
IT, Inje University, Gimhae, South Korea Institute of Digital Anti-Aging Healthcare, Inje University, Gimhae,
South Korea ‡

8.1 INTRODUCTION
Healthcare big data analysts and researchers all over the world struggle with multidimensional health-
care data. Similarly, healthcare data providers also hesitate to share sensitive medical data. Conse-
quently, patient-specific care and associated large-scale data mining have become a difficult
challenge. Recently, with the innovation of new technologies, security and privacy of healthcare data
has been given the highest priority. According to a previous study reported in 2015 by Forbes Mag-
azine, more than 112 million data records were either stolen, lost, or inappropriately disclosed [1].
Currently, the main healthcare big data stakeholders are patients, payers, providers, and analyzers.
Fig. 8.1 presents the stakeholders of healthcare big data. To perform a detailed analysis of medical
records, there must be adequate collaboration and communication among these four stakeholders.
In one way or another, security and privacy-breaching incidents are also linked to those entities. Firstly,
patients are the source of all types of data. Patients produce this information using clinical records or
wearable devices [2]. Secondly, payers are those who directly or indirectly support the patients while
paying the healthcare cost (i.e., insurance companies, private sources, and bank loans etc.). Thirdly, the
providers are those who collect and store medical records (hospitals, clinics, medical centers, blood
banks etc.). Finally, the researchers and analyzers are who use that information provided by the afore-
mentioned sources to improve the performance of the healthcare industry.
In the past when blockchain technology was not available, the interoperability of healthcare data by
different institutions could be categorized into three models: push, pull, and view. In the push model,
the transfer of the data is possible between two providers, and the third provider does not have access to
the system. For example, the data transfer is possible from one department to other department and the
data can be accessed in the same hospital, whereas it is not possible to access the same data from a
different hospital, even though it is transferred to the different hospital. This push model very often
fails to protect the end to end data integrity. In the view model, one provider can ask for the data from
the other provider in an informal way, i.e., without a standardized audit trail. For example, an

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