Thank you very much, Rainyel, for your article. I'm very curious about blockchain technology, but I completely dismiss the use-case you present us for blockchain technology and here is why.
Health records are critical and their usage is highly restricted by law, so it is highly questionable in the first place if it's a good idea to store it in a distributed system, which means to copy it to hundreds of computers. I acknowledge that you are aware of this problem, because you provide encryption as a possible solution. But I have some doubts about that, because...
encryption is a dynamic field with regular scientific progress rendering once-thought secure encryption unsecure (you can think of a cat-and-mouse game)
even worse: many implementations are subject to flaws, leading to much earlier "decryptability" than what has been anticipated for the perfect implementation
the problem is widely known in blockchain space, but only few on-chain encryption attempts exist; a combination of anonymous data and zero-knowledge proofs are much more popular (but I'm not sure if these attempts are a good solution for health records)
In the end your approach seems to enforce blockchain technology (maybe due to technological excitement) in a field, where it's not suitable at all. Since I'm excited by this technology myself I'm sorry for writing such a feedback, but I really think that it's better for all of us when we NOT idolise technology and instead keep an objective, factual view on the things we work with.
I am a young computer scientist graduate in Havana University, Cuba. Passionate about machine learning, blockchain technology, distributed systems and cryptography. https://rayniel95.github.io
Hello Thorsten, sorry for the (very long) delay. You are partially right. Remember, I am Cuban and my use case applies to my country. You said that: "Health records are critical and their usage is highly restricted by law", that is true, in your country, in my country your medical record is the property of the hospital and the Ministry of Public Health (all the hospitals are property of the Ministry of Public Health), so, it does not matter if your medical record is in a "distributed network" owned by the Ministry of Public Health. Anyway, in capitalist countries many proposed solutions store medical records in the hospital database and only the hash is stored on the blockchain. I recommend to read: "MedRec: Using Blockchain for Medical Data
Access and Permission Management", "ClinicAppChain: A Low-Cost Blockchain Hyperledger Solution for Healthcare", "MedChain: Efficient Healthcare Data Sharing via Blockchain". Your healthcare system is very different from the cuban healthcare system. You have doubts about the encryption methods? You can use AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) for symmetric encryption or ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) with Secp256k1 curve (Bitcoin cipher) for asymmetric encryption, both algorithms have well-tested, public implementations. Implementing blockchain technology in the Cuban health system will help us to find out who modified a medical record, know the history of a medical record (all changes made), avoid data loss, etc., this will give us more control over medical records. Last, remember that this is my undergraduate thesis project :).
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Thank you very much, Rainyel, for your article. I'm very curious about blockchain technology, but I completely dismiss the use-case you present us for blockchain technology and here is why.
Health records are critical and their usage is highly restricted by law, so it is highly questionable in the first place if it's a good idea to store it in a distributed system, which means to copy it to hundreds of computers. I acknowledge that you are aware of this problem, because you provide encryption as a possible solution. But I have some doubts about that, because...
encryption is a dynamic field with regular scientific progress rendering once-thought secure encryption unsecure (you can think of a cat-and-mouse game)
even worse: many implementations are subject to flaws, leading to much earlier "decryptability" than what has been anticipated for the perfect implementation
the problem is widely known in blockchain space, but only few on-chain encryption attempts exist; a combination of anonymous data and zero-knowledge proofs are much more popular (but I'm not sure if these attempts are a good solution for health records)
In the end your approach seems to enforce blockchain technology (maybe due to technological excitement) in a field, where it's not suitable at all. Since I'm excited by this technology myself I'm sorry for writing such a feedback, but I really think that it's better for all of us when we NOT idolise technology and instead keep an objective, factual view on the things we work with.
Hello Thorsten, sorry for the (very long) delay. You are partially right. Remember, I am Cuban and my use case applies to my country. You said that: "Health records are critical and their usage is highly restricted by law", that is true, in your country, in my country your medical record is the property of the hospital and the Ministry of Public Health (all the hospitals are property of the Ministry of Public Health), so, it does not matter if your medical record is in a "distributed network" owned by the Ministry of Public Health. Anyway, in capitalist countries many proposed solutions store medical records in the hospital database and only the hash is stored on the blockchain. I recommend to read: "MedRec: Using Blockchain for Medical Data
Access and Permission Management", "ClinicAppChain: A Low-Cost Blockchain Hyperledger Solution for Healthcare", "MedChain: Efficient Healthcare Data Sharing via Blockchain". Your healthcare system is very different from the cuban healthcare system. You have doubts about the encryption methods? You can use AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) for symmetric encryption or ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) with Secp256k1 curve (Bitcoin cipher) for asymmetric encryption, both algorithms have well-tested, public implementations. Implementing blockchain technology in the Cuban health system will help us to find out who modified a medical record, know the history of a medical record (all changes made), avoid data loss, etc., this will give us more control over medical records. Last, remember that this is my undergraduate thesis project :).