A Blockchain-Based Notarization Service for Biomedical Knowledge Retrieval

Abstract

Biomedical research and clinical decision depend increasingly on scientific evidence realized by a number of au-thoritative databases, mostly public and continually enriched via peer scientific contributions. Given the dynamicnature of biomedical evidence data and their usage in the sensitive domain of biomedical science, it is importantto ensure retrieved data integrity and non-repudiation. In this work, we present a blockchain-based notarizationservice that uses smart digital contracts to seal a biomedical database query and the respective results. The goal isto ensure that retrieved data cannot be modified after retrieval and that the database cannot validly deny that theparticular data has been provided as a result of a specific query. Biomedical evidence data versioning is also sup-ported. The feasibility of the proposed notarization approach is demonstrated using a real blockchain infrastruc-ture and is tested on two different biomedical evidence databases: a publicly available medical risk factorreference repository and on the PubMed database of biomedical literature references and abstracts.