HealthChain

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  HealthChain Image

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  HealthChain Logo

Inspiration

In Nigeria, the significance of effectively managing patient medical records cannot be overstated. Currently, Nigerians encounter the inconvenience of having to repeatedly register their medical history whenever they visit a new healthcare facility or hospital, either within their location or in another location in the Country. This often results in redundant tests being conducted by new healthcare providers, leading to unnecessary expenses and delays in treatment. Furthermore, in areas lacking testing facilities, patients are forced to travel long distances to access necessary medical examinations.

What it does

HealthChain addresses this critical issue by leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate the secure and efficient sharing of medical records, subject to patient approval. With HealthChain , patients no longer need to undergo redundant tests or travel extensively to access medical laboratories or testing facilities. Through secure and user-controlled access permissions, patients can authorize or revoke access to their medical records, ensuring privacy and data security while streamlining healthcare delivery. HealthChain aims to revolutionize how medical records are managed and shared, placing control firmly in the hands of patients while ensuring security, privacy, and interoperability. This concept not only fosters trust between patients and healthcare providers but also paves the way for a more efficient and secure healthcare information exchange.

How we built it

1. Smart Contract Development: A Solidity smart contract developed was developed with hardhat tool to handle identity verification, access permissions, and the audit trail of record access. We ran several test cases before deploying to the testnet.

2. Blockchain Network: Lisk L2 blockchain for lower transaction costs, speed, interoperability and security.

3. Frontend Application: The user interface was developed with Nextjs.

Challenges we ran into

• Data Storage: Blockchain is not suited for storing large volumes of data like images or detailed medical records. Utilizing light.house decentralized storage was challenging and the deadline was fast approaching so we rewrote the contract to store encoded patient record onchain. We intend to utilize a decentralized storage in our V2 where we'll integrate IPFS for immutable patient record identification and IPNS in managing the patient's medical record.

-Package Dependency Conflict: Encoding the user medical record from the client-side using ethers.js v5.7 kept throwing error and it took sometime to fix that. This was because the frontend was merged from a different repo and the dependencies conflicted. this was resolved by separating the repos.

• Regulatory Compliance: HealthChain compliance with healthcare regulations and data protection laws may be challenging if we export HealthChain outside Nigeria. This includes considerations for data encryption, patient consent, and data portability.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Decentralized Identity Verification: Patients and healthcare providers have unique blockchain-based identities. This ensures secure and verifiable interactions.

Permissioned Record Access: Patients grant or revoke access to their medical records through smart contracts. Only authorized entities (as permitted by the patient) can view or update records.

Immutable Audit Trail: Every access or modification of a medical record is recorded on the blockchain. This provides an immutable history of who accessed what and when, enhancing transparency and trust.

Data Encryption: patient medical records data are encrypted. This ensures that data privacy is maintained, even if the blockchain is public.

What we learned

Using blockchain technology, we can ensure the availability of a patient's medical record irrespective of the location they are. we can manage patient medical records in a way that the records are always available but only accessible by health providers the patient approve.

What's next for HealthChain

• HealthChain will be integrated with a decentralized storage to manage user data.
• The V2 will have a more interactive user interface and an improved user experience.
• At 500 registered users, Healthchain mobile app development will begin for easy accesibility.
• More smart contract features will be added to HealthChain including Tokenomics, Governance and improved security checks.
• HealthChain will apply for the Lisk accelerator program

Built With

• chai
• daisyui
• ethers.js
• hardhat
• nextjs
• solidity
• tailwinds
• typescript
• web3-react