Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:04:49.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Enacting policies in digital health: a case for smart legal contracts and distributed ledgers?

Part of: Distributed Ledger Technologies: Papers Arising from Three Australian Symposia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2020

Zoran Milosevic Open the ORCID record for Zoran Milosevic [Opens in a new window]
Zoran Milosevic*
Affiliation:
Deontik Pty Ltd, 2/10 Buna Street, Brisbane, QLD4032, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for the enactment of policies in digital health based on our earlier work on the implementation of digital contracts in distributed systems. A formal policy model and an abstract policy language for the expression of healthcare policies are first proposed, leveraging the semantics of the ISO Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing enterprise language standard. Healthcare consent policies included in the HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resource (FHIR®) standard are used to illustrate the modelling approach. Several distributed ledger and smart legal contract options were considered next as target platforms for implementation. Their benefits are highlighted along with considerations on their use reflecting business concerns of risk, trust and cost.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Knowledge Engineering Review , Volume 35 , 2020 , e6
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This is an extended version of the paper presented at the 3rd Symposium On Distributed Ledger Technology, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia (Milosevic 2018)

References

Andersen, J., Elsborg, E. Henglein, F., Simonsen, J. & Stefansen, C. 2006. Compositional specification of commercial contracts. International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer 8, 485–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ResearchKit. 2019. https://www.researchandcare.org/researchkit/, (Accessed 4 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Australian Government, The Department of Health. 2018. Implementing the Framework to guide the secondary use of My Health Record system data, https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/eHealth-frameworkGoogle Scholar
Berry, A., Milosevic, Z. 2013. Real-time analytics for legacy data streams in health: monitoring health data quality. In EDOC 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berry, A. & Milosevic, Z. 2005. Extending choreography with business contract constraints. International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems 14 (02n03), 131–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, A., Hacking, A., Milosevic, Z. & Zander, A. 2013. Specifying and building interoperable eHealth systems: ODP benefits and lessons learned. Computer Standards and Interfaces 35 (3), 313–328.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Center for Biomedical Blockchain Research. 2019. Healthcare and Biomedical blockchains, https://db.biomedicalblockchain.org, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Clause, Connected Contracting. https://clause.io, (Accessed 27 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
DeepMind, Trust, confidence and Verifiable Data Audit. 2018. https://deepmind.com/blog/trust-confidence-verifiable-data-audit/ , (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Deon Digital, The Deon Digital CSL Language Guide, https://deondigital.com/docs/v0.39.0/, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Digital Asset, DAML Smart Contract Language, DAML, https://daml.com, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Dimitrakos, T., Djordjevic, I., Milosevic, Z., Josang, A. & Phillips, C. 2003. Contract performance assessment for secure and dynamic virtual collaborations, DAML. In Proceedings of IEEE EDOC 2003 Conference.Google Scholar
Dinh, T. N. & Thai, T. 2018. AI and blockchain: a disruptive integration. IEEE Computer 51 (9), 48–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ergo, Language Overview, https://docs.accordproject.org/docs/ergo, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Etherium, Solidity smart contracts, https://www.ethereum.orgGoogle Scholar
Fish, I. & Barnard, M. 2018. Saving money and lives with blockchain for coldchain breaks. IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences Industries Blog, May 7.Google Scholar
GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32016R0679ss, (Accessed 7 June 2019)Google Scholar
Governatori, G. & Milosevic, Z. 2005. Dealing with contract violations: formalism and domain specific language. In IEEE EDOC 2005.Google Scholar
Governatori, G., Idelberger, F., Milosevic, Z., Riveret, R., Sartor, G. & Xu, X. 2018. On legal contracts, imperative and declarative smart contracts, and blockchain systems. AI and Law, 1–33.Google Scholar
Grieve, G.Blockchain in Heathcare – are standards needed? 2018. http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=2778 (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Griggs, K. N., Ossipova, O., Kohlios, C. P., et al. 2018. Healthcare blockchain system using smart contracts for secure automated remote patient monitoring. J. Med. Syst. 42, 130.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lonsetteig, A. B. 2017. R3s Corda uncovered: it is not blockchain. Global Trade Review, https://www.gtreview.com/magazine/volume-15issue-3/r3s-corda-uncovered-not-blockchain/Google Scholar
Hanson, J. & Milosevic, Z. 2003. Conversation-oriented protocols for contract negotiations. In IEEE EDOC 2003 Conference.Google Scholar
Healthcare IT News (HITN), Federal Government successfully trials blockchain for researcher access to Australian patient records. https://www.healthcareit.com.au/article/federal-government-successfully-trials-blockchain-researcher-access-australian-patient, (Accessed 07 June 2019).Google Scholar
Brown, R. G. Carlyle, J., Grigg, I., Hearn, M. 2016. Corda: An Introduction, August 2016.Google Scholar
FHIR® Consent Resource, Release 4.0. 2019. https://www.hl7.org/fhir/consent.html, (Accessed 4 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
HIPPA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-compliance-checklist/ , (Accessed 20 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
Hyperledger, Architecture, Smart contracts, hyperledger.org, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
IBM Institute for Business Value. 2016. Healthcare rallies for blockchains: Keeping patients at the center.Google Scholar
ISDA Linklaters Whitepaper. 2017. Smart Contracts and Distributed Ledger-A Legal Perspective, Aug. 2017, https://www.isda.org/a/6EKDE/smart-contracts-and-distributed-ledger-a-legal-perspective.pdf (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
ISO/IEC 15414. 2015. Information technology: Open distributed processing, Reference model, Enterprise Language, 3rd ed.Google Scholar
Linington, P., Milosevic, Z. Tanaka, Raymond, K. 1998. Policies in communities: Extending the ODP enterprise viewpoint. Proceedings Second International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing.Google Scholar
Linington, P., Milosevic, Z. Tanaka, A. & Vallecillo, A. 2011. Building Enterprise Systems with ODP, An Introduction to Open Distributed Processing. Chapman Hall/CRC Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linington, P., Milosevic, Z., Cole, J., Gibson, S., Kulkarni, S. & Neal, S. 2004. A unified behavioural model and a contract language for extended enterprise. Data Knowledge Engineering 51 (1), 5–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Linington, P., Miyazaki, H. & Vallecillo, A. 2012. Obligations and Delegation in the ODP Enterprise Language. In The IEEE 16th International Enterprise Distributed Computing Workshops, EDOC 2012.Google Scholar
Lòpez-Pintado, O., Garcia-Bañuelos, L., Dumas, M., Weber, I. & Ponomarev, A. 2018. CATERPILLAR: A Business Process Execution Engine on the Ethereum Blockchain, arXiv:1808.03517.Google Scholar
Milosevic, Z. & Bond, A. 2016. Digital health Interoperability frameworks: use of RM-ODP standards. In IEEE EDOC SoE4EE Workshop.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milosevic, Z. & Bond, A. 2016. Services, processes and policies for digital health: FHIR® case study. In IEEE EDOC SoE4EE Workshop.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milosevic, Z., Arnold, D. & O’Connor, L. 1996. Inter-enterprise contract architecture for open distributed systems: Security requirements. In WETICE 1996.Google Scholar
Milosevic, Z., Sadiq, S. & Orlowska, M. 2006. Translating business contract into compliant business processes. In IEEE EDOC 2006 Conference.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milosevic, Z., Linington, P., Gibson, G., Kulkarni, S. & Cole, J. 2004. Inter-organisational collaborations supported by e-contracts. In Building the E-Service Society Conference, 413–429, Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milosevic, Z. 2018. Towards digitalisation of healthcare policies: case for smart legal contracts? In Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on Distributed Ledger Technology, Griffith University, Nov. 2018.Google Scholar
MedicoHealth. 2019. https://medicohealth.io, (Accessed 4 Jan. 2020).Google Scholar
Moehrke, J. 2018. Blockchain for Patient to Sell Their Data to Clinical Research, Aug. 2018, https://healthcaresecprivacy.blogspot.com/2018/08/blockchain-for-patient-to-sell-their.html , (Accessed 07 June 2019).Google Scholar
The National Law Review. 2019. Blockchain in Energy: Smart Legal Contracts on the Rise, July 2019, https://www.natlawreview.com/article/blockchain-energy-smart-legal-contracts-rise , (Accessed 30 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
Object Management Group (OMG), Business Process Management for Healthcare (BPM+ Health), https://www.bpm-plus.org , (Accessed 31 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
Object Management Group (OMG). 2017. Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules (SVBR, https://www.omg.org/spec/SBVR/About-SBVR/, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Olsen, L. A, Aisner, D., McGinnis, J. M. (ed). 2007. Institute of medicine roundtable on evidence-based medicine. In The Learning Healthcare System: Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53494/ (Accessed 8 June 2019).Google Scholar
Smart Contract Alliance, Lexicon, https://digitalchamber.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lexicon.pdf, (Accessed 31 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
Solidity, The Solidity Contract-Oriented Programming Language. https://github.com/ethereum/solidity, (Accessed June 2019).Google Scholar
The Conversation, Google car crash: who is to blame when a driverless car has an accident? http://theconversation.com/google-car-crash-whos-to-blame-when-a-driverless-car-has-an-accident-55664 , (Accessed 20 Dec. 2019).Google Scholar
Yaga, D., Mell, P., Roby, N., Scarfone, K. 2018. Blockchain Technology Overview, NIST, Oct. 2018, https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.IR.8202, (Accessed 7 June 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wikipedia Contributors. 2019. Informed consent, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent, (Accessed 7 June 2019).Google Scholar
Zyskind, G. & Nathan, O. Decentralizing privacy: Using blockchain to protect personal data. In 2015 IEEE Security and Privacy Workshops.CrossRefGoogle Scholar