SBIR Phase I: Building Trust Between Patients and Providers: Adapting Blockchain Technology to Electronic Health Records Systems

这个小企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是研究、设计和确定一种创新、安全、新的方式来在分布式分类账或区块链上存储和分析电子健康记录。该项目的目标是确定如何重新定义以电子健康记录为重点的分布式分类账系统的激励模式。通过开始研究如何将医疗记录安全、准确和高效地存储在智能合同平台中，以及如何分析这些记录以帮助治疗患者，我们努力设计解决方案，不仅有助于协调和可互操作的个人健康记录存储，而且还为与治疗、存活率和洞察力发现相关的更可靠的分析和机器学习应用程序创造机会，从而改善对患者的长期护理。凭借280亿美元的医疗保健行业，再加上分布式分类帐技术相当新、不成熟且不断发展的格局，我们努力研究一条更清晰的途径，利用这些工具最终维护安全、收集更好的医疗保健见解并提供更好的患者护理。该SBIR第一阶段项目建议在现有许可的分布式分类帐体系结构的基础上研究电子健康记录管理系统的设计和实施。在这项工作中克服了三个主要的技术挑战，涉及数据集和影响：第一，保护患者数据和确保私人数据保持隐私的挑战；第二，系统可伸缩性、互操作性和成本效益；第三，激励利益相关者和建立网络效应。我们的目标是设计、调查并最终提出一个围绕定义的用户群设计的区块链驱动的EHR系统，确保这三个挑战都有适用的解决方案。该项目的结果将是一份研究驱动的白皮书和试点设计，重点放在拟议的系统架构和机制上，以确保数据隐私和HIPAA合规性，以及分类账基础设施的概念证明。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is researching, designing and identifying an innovative, secure, new way to store and analyze electronic health records on the distributed ledger, or blockchain. The project goal is determining how to redefine the incentive model of a distributed ledger system focused on electronic health records. By beginning work on how medical records can securely, accurately and efficiently be stored in a smart contract platform, and how those records can then be analyzed to help treat patients, we strive to design solutions that lend themselves not only to the coordinated and interoperable storage of personal health records, but also to create opportunity for more reliable analytics and machine learning applications related to treatment, survivability rates and discovery of insights leading to improvement in long-term care of patients. With a $28 billion healthcare industry, combined with a fairly new, immature and constantly evolving landscape for distributed ledger technology, we strive to research a clearer path to leveraging these tools to ultimately maintain security, glean better healthcare insights and provide better patient care. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to research the design and implementation of an electronic health record management system on top of an existing permissioned distributed ledger architecture. There are three main technical challenges overcome in this effort, which relate to the dataset and implications: first, the challenge in securing patient data and ensuring private data remains private; secondly, system scalability, interoperability, and cost- effectiveness; third, incentivizing stakeholders and building network effect. Our objectives are to design, investigate and ultimately propose a blockchain-driven EHR system designed around the defined user population, ensuring the three challenges have applicable solutions. The project result will be a research-driven white paper and pilot design, focused on a proposed system architecture and mechanisms to ensure data privacy and HIPAA compliance, as well as a proof of concept for the ledger infrastructure.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.