MedRec: Medical Record Management on the Blockchain

We face a well-known need for innovation in electronic medical records (EMRs), but the technology is cumbersome and innovation is impeded by inefficiency and regulation. We demonstrate MedRec as a solution tuned to the needs of patients, the treatment community, and medical researchers. It is a novel, decentralized record management system for EMRs that uses blockchain technology to manage authentication, confidentiality, accountability, and data sharing. A modular design integrates with providers' existing, local data-storage solutions, enabling interoperability and making our system convenient and adaptable. As a key feature of our work, we engage the medical research community with an integral role in the protocol. Medical researchers provide the "mining" necessary to secure and sustain the blockchain authentication log, in return for access to anonymized, medical metadata in the form of "transaction fees."