Iryo Network Gateways
A brief overview of how the Iryo Network will talk with legacy healthcare providers.
Iryo is a participatory, blockchain driven healthcare network built on decentralizing access to medical data. It aims to drive the next generation of healthcare by standardizing health-data, employing zero-knowledge encryption, and build peer to peer venues for medical research.
In Iryo, data access is no longer controlled by rigid 3rd-parties. Inclusiveness and a permissionless foundation incentivize a sustainable app ecosystem. This approach has the potential to break traditional healthcare silos wide open.
However, the industry must remain mindful of this proverbial reality;
So, how does one tackle the nightmare that is interoperability?
The primary toolset consists of openEHR, open source solutions, open access and abilities for anyone to change code as they see fit. The second line of defence is Iryo, leading the development of the plugins needed to begin interconnecting these legacy medical systems.
What about in the meantime? The time until the tools and plugins are ready?
Let's explore health-data exchanges in the real word, listed from the most simplistic (and practical) options all the way to down to exchanges that can serve closed hospital systems.
The patient’s phone.
In the Iryo system, the patient has their data on their phone. In the absence of any other way to share such data, the patient can simply show their health record to whichever medical professional they choose to visit.
Issuing one-time access.
Healthcare professionals will be able to access patient data through any browser on a device by visiting the Iryo Network Portal (website). Within the portal, the medical professionals would generate a set of temporary keys. Public keys will be displayed as a QR code that the patient can then scan with his or her Iryo app. If the patient decides to consent, they can do so within the app by the press of a button, the app will then issue a signed access permission on the blockchain (with a predefined time limit). The app will also issue a re-encryption key.
The backup server then serves the re-encrypted data to the doctor’s browser for a specified time window (limited by the duration of an open session in the browser).
The first version of the portal would be read-only, however, there is nothing (from a technical standpoint) preventing the updating or adding of data. Future updates might have additional support.
Data exchanges between Iryo Network and closed hospital networks
In the same fashion that cryptocurrencies need a fiat exchange to operate within a legacy system, the Iryo network will employ the Iryo Network Gateway in order to function— instead of fighting with current infrastructure.
The Gateway consists of a:
• Blockchain node
• Storage node (which requires the Iryo token stake to talk with the rest of the network)
• Gateway node
All of the nodes would run on the same box. The Gateway node encrypts & decrypts the data on the fly, secures the keys in its trusted platform module and acts as a point to which the Iryo Network native participant can share the access permission with anyone. In this case, you as a patient are asked to share your data with the gateway instead of peer to peer, to your doctor’s device.
This way, even legacy systems would be able to supply the Iryo Network based Bearer Health Record with Real-time data writes. This eliminates one of the most tedious aspects of current healthcare systems; having to extract data after every visit- the medical data will be updated and present in the phone before ever leaving the clinic. Finally, this method doesn’t create “just another standard”, but acts as the escape route from the legacy system to a new, more functional one, where the patient gets to keep and control their data as an asset.
