HealthChain is an open source Python based blockchain specifically designed to store health record data.
It is designed to be anonymous, but not fully encrypted, making it possible to easily run analysis on population wide data.
Python environment should be activated with source venv/bin/activate
The blockchain is simply a list of Block objects. Each block contains some metadata, as well as a data field,
which contains the core content stored as JSON. data must be stored as a Record type object to ensure proper
serialization/deserialization.
The blockchain will always generate a genesis block when it is created. All this does is signify the start of the blockchain and provide a root hash for all subsequent block.
As will all blockchains the data is permanent and can not be altered after being written. In the context of healthcare data this means that if a mistake is made it will need to be corrected with a block that negates the erroneous one, and then another block to insert new data (this system has not yet been built).
A user must be created by inserting a USER_DATA type block. Once a user is created with a specific id its private
key will need to be retained. The initial user block contains some basic user information, as well as their public key.
The public key from this block should be used to validate all subsequent transactions associated with the user. In order
to allow write access from other users we might need to use some sort of symmetric encryption.