Abstract

Healthcare procedure documentation requires accurate capture of patient details, procedure orders, perioperative indicators, and verification results while preventing unauthorized modification during clinical handoff. This paper presents an automated healthcare workflow control system that documents patient procedure information through a secure QR code mechanism and verifies record integrity using a Hash-Based Message Authentication Code (HMAC). The prototype was implemented as a desktop application with two integrated functions: a QR generator that captures patient and procedure fields and a scanner-verifier that reads the QR payload through a webcam. The system converts patient procedure fields into an ordered canonical payload, generates an HMAC-SHA256 security code using a secret key, embeds the security code in the QR content, and validates scanned records by recomputing and comparing the HMAC value. Implementation screenshots demonstrate two valid workflows and one tampered QR scenario. Results show that unchanged QR records are identified as valid, while modified payloads or mismatched secret keys are flagged as invalid. The proposed design provides a lightweight and reproducible approach for tamper-evident procedure documentation in healthcare simulation and small clinical workflow environments.

Biography

Herminiño C. Lagunzad is a researcher with interests in healthcare technology, automation, cybersecurity, and secure information systems. Their research focuses on developing practical and reliable solutions for healthcare workflow management, data integrity, and secure patient documentation. Their current work explores QR code-based documentation and HMAC-based integrity verification to improve the security and reliability of healthcare procedure records. They are interested in applying emerging technologies to develop efficient, secure, and user-friendly systems for real-world healthcare environments.