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PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Big Data
Sec. Medicine and Public Health
Volume 6 - 2023 | doi: 10.3389/fdata.2023.1146023
This article is part of the Research Topic

Innovations in Digital Health and Wellbeing

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MediLinker: A blockchain-based decentralized health information management platform for patient-centric healthcare

John Robert Bautista1*, Daniel T. Harrell2, 3, Anjum Khurshid2, 4*, Eric T. Meyer1, Ladd Hanson5, Eliel de Oliveira3 and Mustafa Abdul-Moheeth3, 6
  • 1School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • 2Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Harvard Medical School, United States
  • 3Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • 4The University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • 5Information Technology Services, The University of Texas at Austin, United States
  • 6Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas, United States

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Patients’ control over how their health information is stored has been an ongoing issue in health informatics. Currently, most patients’ health information is stored in centralized but siloed health information systems of healthcare institutions, rarely connected to or interoperable with other institutions outside of their specific health system. This centralized approach to the storage of health information is susceptible to breaches, though it can be mitigated using technology that allows for decentralized access. One promising technology that offers the possibility of decentralization, data protection, and interoperability is blockchain. In 2019, our interdisciplinary team from the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School, School of Information, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Information Technology Services developed MediLinker – a blockchain-based decentralized health information management platform for patient-centric healthcare. This paper provides an overview of MediLinker and outlines its ongoing and future development and implementation. Overall, this paper contributes insights into the opportunities and challenges in developing and implementing blockchain-based technologies in healthcare.

Keywords: Blockchain, Decentralization, Health Information Management, MediLinker, Patient identity

Received: 16 Jan 2023; Accepted: 01 Jun 2023.

Copyright: © 2023 Bautista, Harrell, Khurshid, Meyer, Hanson, de Oliveira and Abdul-Moheeth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence:
Dr. John Robert Bautista, The University of Texas at Austin, School of Information, Austin, United States
Dr. Anjum Khurshid, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02215, Massachusetts, United States