RE: Weekly Update #2 on Decentralized EHR Project – Architecture
Excellent progress! I'm glad to see things being planned so efficiently.
Keep up the good work!
There are a few things that may be important to consider.
Will you be planning specialized infrastructure so emergency departments can quickly and efficiently access critical patient information with optimal realiability?
Would you be designing some feature to allow all current patient records to be periodically stored in a database onsite in case of network outage?
Who will manage the witness nodes? Would it be your organization, or would any of it be managed by the facilities?
You take great care to insure that healthcare personnel are rewarded. Do you have any consideration for other necessary staff members? IT, Maintenance, Etc.
Have you considered integrating a scheduling platform? Perhaps that is a project for a whole new blockchain ;-)
Thanks for reading @akrid and great questions! Let me see how many of these I can knock out right now since I'll be covering all of these in greater detail in the coming weeks:
The scheduling platform will definitely be a feature of our solution - it will just be a part of a separate network, since the main chain will be designated for patient records and patient-physician communication. As hinted in the article, the scheduling system will allow patients to see a list of all physicians ordered by rank, location and specialty - information which will essentially be retrieved from each doctor's profile.
For now, only the three main users served by the system - nurses, physicians and of course patients will be rewarded by the system. Now if the witnesses voted by the stakeholders happen be IT and other staff members, they will also be rewarded as block validators.
The witness nodes will be managed by witnesses voted in by the stakeholders - patients and physicians. Initially, the witnesses for our solution will be the members of our team. When the system is implemented at hospitals, rehabs and clinics and fully-functional, patients and physicians will be able to vote other people as witnesses, such as IT personnel, engineers, other physicians, etc. Of course for a Graphene blockchain, the minimum number of witnesses will be 11 and the maximum number 1001 - always ensuring that there are an odd number of witnesses for tiebreakers.
A feature to allow backup of patient records in case of network outage is a definite consideration that we will make after we have completed the basic prototype and begin development of the full solution.
Our Decentralized EHR solution will be specifically designed for ease of use by nurses, physicians and patients and will always ensure that critical patient information - vitals, labs, imaging results, meds and orders - are quickly accessed at any time from any place within as well as outside the hospital, especially the emergency department.
If you have any more questions, let me know! We're going to go over all of this in greater detail as we start building the prototype so stay tuned!
Thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed and complete response.
It seems like you have everything figured out.
Keep up the great work! This is truly the most important project I've ever seen on blockchain, not to mention the one with the most potential.
You're very welcome @akrid, thank you very much for the questions! I always appreciate your thoughtful comments and support. I will keep you posted on everything - keep the questions coming! ;)