Applications of Blockchain Technology in Medicine and Healthcare: Challenges and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Blockchain technology has gained considerable attention, with an escalating interest in a plethora of numerous applications, ranging from data management, financial services, cyber security, IoT, and food science to healthcare industry and brain research. There has been a remarkable interest witnessed in utilizing applications of blockchain for the delivery of safe and secure healthcare data management. Also, blockchain is reforming the traditional healthcare practices to a more reliable means, in terms of effective diagnosis and treatment through safe and secure data sharing. In the future, blockchain could be a technology that may potentially help in personalized, authentic, and secure healthcare by merging the entire real-time clinical data of a patient’s health and presenting it in an up-to-date secure healthcare setup. In this paper, we review both the existing and latest developments in the field of healthcare by implementing blockchain as a model. We also discuss the applications of blockchain, along with the challenges faced and future perspectives.

Blockchain Technology in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Review and Directions for Future Research

“…It is created when a patient is admitted to a hospital, and when a physician diagnoses a patient, or when a diagnostic result such as an MRI scan is stored in the EHR system [100]. Therefore, security of such digital information is given utmost priority, and currently using blockchain for a safe and secure healthcare data [53]. Keeping the value of data, and reducing storage cost for data management in healthcare blockchain technology plays a significant role.…”

“…Similar to other surveys, the paper did not study some of the important blockchain-based healthcare applications, such as smart contract, data sharing, interoperability and cloud storage. Siyal et al [53] discussed several blockchain-based healthcare applications, including fraud detection, neuroscience research, clinical research, and EHR. The main issue in Siyal et al [53] work is that many recently published papers were not included.…”

“…Siyal et al [53] discussed several blockchain-based healthcare applications, including fraud detection, neuroscience research, clinical research, and EHR. The main issue in Siyal et al [53] work is that many recently published papers were not included. McGhin et al [54] provided a review on healthcare industry requirements to protect patients' medical information using blockchain.…”

Exploring the Disruptiveness of Cryptocurrencies: A Causal Layered Analysis-Based Approach

“…Therefore, regulatory bodies interfered to regulate cryptocurrencies in the past years [47]. Blockchain, the underlying technology behind the cryptocurrencies has gained popularity in many other areas such as healthcare and supply-chain [48,49]. Therefore, it has already become evident that cryptocurrencies have the potential for firm level disruption.…”

Privacy-Preserving Statistical Analysis of Health Data Using Paillier Homomorphic Encryption and Permissioned Blockchain

“…The efficiency of health data management systems has a significant impact on patient care. However, existing health management systems suffer from lack of interoperability, expensive implementation, maintenance, and security vulnerabilities [50,11].…”