A blockchain-based smart contract system architecture for dependable health processes

Healthcare is presumably one of the sectors which will have the higher prospects in the near future by adopting blockchain technologies. Indeed, blockchain technologies permit to keep track of the clinical consents, plans, and protocols related to a clinical trial or examination, so to get up to-date and tamper-proof documentation which can be shared only among the patient and the healthcare personnel which was authorized for that clinical trial or examination. Moreover, smart contracts can be deployed and executed within various phases of the above processes in order to ensure their transparency and compliance to some guidelines and/or standards. This paper presents a novel blockchain and smart contract-based architecture, designed for allowing health professionals and decision-makers to be aware of both the tasks of a health process currently carried out for the care of a patient, and the possible deviations made with respect to the planned process. In this way, it is possible not only to register in an immutable way the health and audit data related to a specific health task, but also to analyse the reasons for which some health processes were not carried out as initially scheduled.