Informed Consent as Patient Driven Policy for Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment: A Smart Contract Based Approach

Digitized healthcare systems improve services, make it easier for healthcare providers to work together, improve the accuracy of diagnoses, and get the most out of each treatment. They provide healthcare services that are better, faster, more reliable, and less expensive. With the help of information technology, computing resources, and digitized health records, medical researchers are trying to solve critical health problems like COVID-19. However, electronic healthcare systems significantly risk patients' data privacy and security. Anyone with credentials can access patients' healthcare data. Patients grant consent to share or access data. But they need a way to ensure informed consent is done right and on time. Due to the centralized authority in present healthcare systems, healthcare-covered entities perform all operations. As a result, many unwanted events and security incidents happen in healthcare systems. Patients must know how their data is accessed, by whom, and when. Therefore, a blockchain and smart contract-based patient-informed consent management system is proposed. Where patients provide informed consent to share or access their health records, as well as methods to ensure that informed consent is properly completed. The immutability and auto-triggering properties of blockchain and smart contracts ensure the integrity and accountability of the given informed consent.