Ethereum - When we use the smart contract

Question

We have to develop a blockchain application in the medical domain.so as a beginner, I have some questions.

1. When we use the smart contracts?
2. How to store the patient details(whether complete text or file) in Ethereum? Can I use a smart contract for that? which is good?
3. How to retrieve the data from the Ethereum chain? If I need a particular patient data only.

Answer 1

This is a broad question that is hard to be answered here. But I get these type of questions a lot at conferences and meetups, so let me share with you what I usually respond:

You have a solution, in this case, a blockchain or Ethereum , and you try to construct a problem around it, ie, how to store medical data or patient data . And that's not how it works. You don't want more problems to solve, but you want more solutions to your already existing problems.

If you have a problem, ie, how to maintain integrity and transparency of medical transactions , and you eventually figure out that a distributed consensus protocol with smart contracts does the trick, you are on the right track. But not the other way around.