A Framework For Data Sharing Between Healthcare Providers Using Blockchain

The healthcare data are considered as a highly valuable source of information that can improve healthcare systems to be more intelligent and improve the quality of the provided services. However, due to security and privacy issues, sharing data between healthcare organisations is challenging. This has led to data shortage in the healthcare sector which is considered as a significant issue not only in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) but also worldwide. The primary objective of conducting this paper is to investigate the various factors that enable secure sharing and exchange of healthcare information between different healthcare providers in the KSA. It starts by discussing the current literature and frameworks for managing healthcare data information and the challenges that health providers encounter, particularly when it comes to issues such as data security, patient privacy, and healthcare information exchange. These challenges in managing healthcare data have necessitated the need for implementing a solution that can allow medical providers to have access to updated healthcare information. Attention in the healthcare sector has been drawn to blockchain technology as a part of the solution, especially after the technology was successfully applied in the financial sector to improve the security of financial transactions, particularly involving digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Therefore, a framework based on the blockchain technology has been proposed to achieve the goals of the present research.