Cloud-based electronic health record for health data exchange

Abstract

This paper proposes a model for an Electronic Health Record for Health Data Exchange based on a SaaS (Software as a service) service model developed on top of cloud computing technology. Service oriented architecture (SOA) and SaaS enable establishment of service model by leveraging the benefits of both. In the proposed model EHRs are stored in the cloud, and can be accessed through a web portal or background web services through SOA. The system is using Health Level Seven International (HL7) standard and is capable of storing information on: healthcare processes, resources, users and authorization, also capable of recording of all data on the patient history, diagnostic test data, therapy, decisions request for further investigations, and treatment. The system is set up to support the use of technologies, decision support and management plans. Owners of EHRs are responsible for generating access policies based on the attributes of authorized healthcare providers, encrypting EHRs and uploading encrypted EHRs, digital signing of all request for getting data and digital signing of response into the cloud. EHRs is organized into a hierarchical data structure, which give possibilities to share different parts of the EHR making our model more flexible.