No abstract available. Editor’s note: A proposal to implement distributed ledger technology for electronic health records is outlined here. The rationale for integration of distributed ledgers in the healthcare domain is introduced, followed by a discussion of the features enabled by the use of a blockchain. An open source implementation of a distributed ledger is then presented. The article concludes with an examination of opportunities and challenges ahead in deploying blockchains for digital health.
Jensen P, Jensen L, Brunak S. Mining electronic health records: towards better research applications and clinical care. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2012;(6):395–405.
2.
Häyrinen K, Saranto K, Nykänen P. Definition, structure, content, use and impacts of electronic health records: a review of the research literature. International journal of medical informatics. 2008;(5):291–304.
3.
Jha A, Desroches C, Campbell E, Donelan K, Rao S, Ferris T, et al. Use of electronic health records in US hospitals. 2009;(16):1628–38.
4.
Beasley J, Sinsky C. Electronic health records. Annals of internal medicine. 2014;(9):680.
5.
Hripcsak G, Albers D. Next-generation phenotyping of electronic health records. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2013;(1):117–21.
6.
Blumenthal D, Tavenner M. The “meaningful use” regulation for electronic health records. New England Journal of Medicine. 2010;(6):501–4.
7.
Mainelli M, Smith M. Sharing ledgers for sharing economies: an exploration of mutual distributed ledgers (aka blockchain technology). The Journal of Financial Perspectives. 2015;(3):38–69.
8.
Walport M. Distributed Ledger Technology: Beyond Blockchain. UK Government Office for Science. 2016;19.
9.
Dixon B, Gibson P, Frederickson C, Rosenman M. Measuring Population Health Using Electronic Health Records: Exploring Biases and Representativeness in a Community Health Information Exchange. 2014;1009–1009.
10.
Christidis K.
11.
Christidis K, Devetsikiotis M. Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things. IEEE Access. 2016;4:2292–303.
12.
Vukolic M. Eventually Returning to Strong Consistency. Data Engineering. 2016;39.
Citation
Copyright
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The statements, opinions and data contained in the journal are solely those of the individual authors and contributors and not of the publisher and the editor(s). We stay neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.