Applications of Blockchain Within Healthcare

Geospatial blockchain: promises, challenges, and scenarios in health and healthcare

“…Blockchain technology can be implemented in this field by holding unique device identifiers for each medical device (a requirement by the US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the EU) and by keeping track and issuing firmware updates by utilising smart contracts. A partnership between Edinburgh Napier University, NHS (National Health Service) Scotland, and Spiritus Development is leading an effort to use blockchain technology to track medical devices through their lifecycle [24, 25]. This device tracking has the potential to improve safety and efficiency of medical devices through more responsive device recalls and issued notices [24, 25].…”

“…A partnership between Edinburgh Napier University, NHS (National Health Service) Scotland, and Spiritus Development is leading an effort to use blockchain technology to track medical devices through their lifecycle [24, 25]. This device tracking has the potential to improve safety and efficiency of medical devices through more responsive device recalls and issued notices [24, 25]. Blockchain-based medical device tracking also can utilise immutability to prevent device loss, theft, or any other sort of malicious tampering.…”

“…Health data can be used for clinical trial recruiting, can be monetised for research purposes, and shared with other healthcare professionals and EHRs (Electronic Health records) as needed for appropriate levels of care [28–30]. MedRec is an EHR implementation project started by the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center that takes a “decentralised approach to manage permissions, authorisation, and data sharing between healthcare systems” [13, 25]. …”

“…Patient wallets are how individuals interface with the blockchain. The wallets contain keys that provide access to the appropriate data [13, 14, 25]. MedRec does not put any actual health data onto the blockchain; Health data stays with the organisation that generated the data.…”

“…This institution or organisation now acts as a data holder or repository when running the full node. When running the node, the organisation agrees to (1) be the repository of the smart contracts stored on the blockchain and the generated data, and (2) that they will obey instructions in the smart contracts to make the data available where needed and permissioned [13, 14, 25]. …”