MedCode: A blockchain based Patient Referral System

Abstract

In the current healthcare system, it's a common practice to refer patients from one medical practitioner to another to complete his/her treatment procedure. This process is known as a referral. Currently in Sri Lanka due to a lack of a well-organized referral system has led to many shortcomings in the health sector. These include misplacement of referral forms causing repetitions of the same treatment procedures, long queues, and congestion in hospital premises. It has even led to misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment procedures which in some cases has led to the loss of a patient's life. As a result patient's faith in the entire health care system has begun to deteriorate. The primary scope of this research is to promote an electronic health record system(ESR) to provide solutions to the challenges which are met by the current system. In this study, the IBM Hyperledger Fabric framework is used to create a prototype. Then the prototype is tested against common use cases found in the health sector.