ALU Medical Blockchain System

A blockchain-based medical records system implemented in C for the ALU Clinic. This system provides a secure, immutable, and transparent way of managing patient medical records.

Features

• Secure blockchain implementation for medical records
• Proof of Work mining mechanism
• Command Line Interface (CLI) for system interaction
• SHA-256 hashing for data integrity
• Transaction handling for medical records
• Chain verification and integrity checking
• Persistence: Blockchain data is automatically saved and loaded from disk
• Backup and Restore: Easily create and restore blockchain backups via CLI

Project Structure

.
├── src/
│   ├── block.c
│   ├── block.h
│   ├── blockchain.c
│   ├── blockchain.h
│   ├── transaction.c
│   ├── transaction.h
│   ├── cli.c
│   ├── cli.h
│   ├── utils.c
│   ├── utils.h
│   ├── persistence.c
│   └── persistence.h
├── include/
│   └── sha256.h
├── Makefile
├── README.md
└── documentation.md

Requirements

• GCC compiler (version 7.0 or higher)
• Make build system
• OpenSSL development libraries (for SHA-256)

Installation

1. Install required dependencies:

   # For Ubuntu/Debian
   sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev
   
   # For macOS
   brew install openssl

2. Clone the repository:

   git clone [repository-url]
   cd alu-medical-blockchain

3. Compile the project:

   make

Usage

Run the program:

./bin/medblockchain

Available commands:

• add - Add a new medical record
• mine - Mine a new block
• view - View the entire blockchain
• verify - Verify chain integrity
• backup - Create a backup of the blockchain
• restore - Restore blockchain from the latest backup
• help - Show available commands
• exit - Exit the program

System Limitations

• Currently supports only local storage (no networking)
• Limited to basic Proof of Work consensus
• No user authentication system
• No encryption of sensitive data (basic implementation)
• Persistence and backup/restore are implemented, but not encrypted

Contributors

King Chukwumere - ALU Student

License

This project is created for educational purposes as part of the ALU Software Engineering Low-Level Specialization coursework.