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）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是研究、设计和确定一种创新的、安全的、新的方式来存储和分析分布式账本（区块链）上的电子健康记录。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账本系统的激励模型。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约平台中，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，不仅可以协调和互操作地存储个人健康记录，还可以为与治疗相关的更可靠的分析和机器学习应用创造机会。生存率和洞察力的发现导致改善患者的长期护理。280亿美元的医疗保健行业，加上分布式账本技术的新兴、不成熟和不断发展的前景，我们努力研究一条更清晰的道路，利用这些工具来最终维护安全，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的许可分布式账本架构之上研究电子健康记录管理系统的设计和实现。在这项工作中，有三个主要的技术挑战要克服，这与数据集和影响有关：首先，在保护患者数据和确保私有数据保持私有方面的挑战；其次是系统的可扩展性、互操作性和性价比；三是激励利益相关者，构建网络效应。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体设计的区块链驱动的电子病历系统，确保这三个挑战有适用的解决方案。项目结果将是一份研究驱动的白皮书和试点设计，重点是拟议的系统架构和机制，以确保数据隐私和HIPAA合规性，以及分类账基础设施的概念验证。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.