Can Blockchain technologies help tackle the opioid epidemic: A Narrative Review

Raghavendra, Meda

doi:10.1093/pm/pny315

Cited by 26 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…This includes situations where the beneficiary may be complicit with a fraud and abuse scheme, a situation where patient validation may actually lead to incorrect adjudication of a fraudulent claim. This is of specific concern when a patient may have a clear incentive to participate and benefit from fraud and abuse, such as in the context of opioid use disorder and drug diversion [ 37 ]. Our system will take multiple measures to identify and proactively prevent cases where both the provider and patient cooperate in fraud and abuse, with modifications to the smart contract claims adjudication process and consensus mechanism specific to high-risk claims and patient profiles.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating Health Care Fraud and Abuse: Conceptualization and Prototyping Study of a Blockchain Antifraud Framework

Mackey¹,

Miyachi²,

Fung³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

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Background An estimated US $2.6 billion loss is attributed to health care fraud and abuse. With traditional health care claims verification and reimbursement, the health care provider submits a claim after rendering services to a patient, which is then verified and reimbursed by the payer. However, this process leaves out a critical stakeholder: the patient for whom the services are actually rendered. This lack of patient participation introduces a risk of fraud and abuse. Blockchain technology enables secure data management with transparency, which could mitigate this risk of health care fraud and abuse. Objective The aim of this study is to develop a framework using blockchain to record claims data and transactions in an immutable format and to enable the patient to act as a validating node to help detect and prevent health care fraud and abuse. Methods We developed a health care fraud and abuse blockchain technical framework and prototype using key blockchain tools and application layers including consensus algorithms, smart contracts, tokens, and governance based on digital identity on the Ethereum platform (Ethereum Foundation). Results Our technical framework maps to the claims adjudication process and focuses on Medicare claims, with the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as the central authority. A prototype of the framework system was developed using the blockchain platform Ethereum (Ethereum Foundation), with its design features, workflow, smart contract functions, system architecture, and software implementation outlined. The software stack used to build the system consisted of a front-end user interface framework, a back-end processing server, and a blockchain network. React was used for the user interface framework, and NodeJS and an Express server were used for the back-end processing server; Solidity was the smart contract language used to interact with a local Ethereum blockchain network. Conclusions The proposed framework and the initial prototype have the potential to improve the health care claims process by using blockchain technology for secure data storage and consensus mechanisms, which make the claims adjudication process more patient-centric for the purposes of identifying and preventing health care fraud and abuse. Future work will focus on the use of synthetic or historic CMS claims data to assess the real-world viability of the framework.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating Health Care Fraud and Abuse: Conceptualization and Prototyping Study of a Blockchain Antifraud Framework

Mackey¹,

Miyachi²,

Fung³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

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show abstract

“…Blockchain technology can also be applied for pain management, as evidenced by Chang et al (2020), or to manage opioid addictions (Raghavendra, 2019). These articles highlight the advantage of managing medical information in a faster and secure way.…”

Section: Blockchain Use In Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, if all epidemiological data relating to opioid abuse and/or deaths were put on a blockchain, the data would become stronger and immediately available. These data could be consulted, e.g., by the competent authorities in order to gain a better understanding of the epidemic course and the development of appropriate solutions (Raghavendra, 2019).…”

Section: Blockchain Use In Medicinementioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of Existing Publications and Most Relevant Projects/Platforms on the Use of Blockchain in Medicine and Neurology

et al. 2021

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BackgroundBlockchain is a new methodology involving a data structure with list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. The aim of the review is to overview the existing publication, projects, and platforms on the use of blockchain in Medicine and Neurology.MethodsWe searched the bibliographic database of MEDLINE and BASE. We also accessed ICObench, Coinmarketcap, and Mobihealthnews databases to explore upcoming, ongoing, and ended projects.ResultsIn medicine, there are many projects related to health care, disease prevention, and promotion of healthy life style. In neurology, only one project looks promising: Neuro, an ongoing scientific-technical project uniting scientists, engineers, and programmers for development of new architectures and algorithms of neural networks. Bibliographic searches found 117 publications on Medline and 203 publications on BASE referring to the use of blockchain technology in medicine. Most of them are presented as reviews (narrative, systematic, or minireview), opinions and hypotheses, commentaries, or perspectives. As for Neurology, only one publication refers to the use of blockchain, specifically to Parkinson’s disease.DiscussionAmong the problems related to medicine, there is the lack of information on the patient’s clinical history that could allow accurate diagnosis and treatment. The possibility of having a register based on blockchain technology could help doctors in many ways, including patient management, choosing and monitoring treatments, and standardization of clinical trials.ConclusionThe use of the blockchain technology in medicine has been repetitively proposed to solve different problems. In this article, we highlight the possible benefits of this technology, with attention to Neurology. Blockchain use can lead to quantifiable benefits in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, especially in clinical trials that can fail because of an incorrect patient recruitment.

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“…The use of the distribute ledger can improve supervision of drug intake and distribution (Tseng et al, 2018), promote regulatory compliance or managing healthcare supplies (Raghavendra, 2019), such as in compliance with HIPAA. The use of blockchain is shown to address a vital problem in healthcare supply chain which is lack of standardisation of business processes.…”

Section: Healthcare Supply Chain Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain in healthcare

Prokofieva

Miah

2019

AJIS

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Blockchain is treated as a ledger system that manages data and their transactions using time-stamped blocks through cryptography and works in a decentralised manner over the computing network. Although blockchain is originally used as a backbone for the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, its capabilities and applications have yet to be extended far beyond cryptocurrencies. In this paper, through conducting a latest systematic literature review aiming to produce new source of evidence, we identify potential applications of the blockchain technologies in healthcare. The comprehensive review looks at the professional and academic open-sourced journals published between 2008 to 2019 to recognise the potential of blockchain based approaches in the purpose of healthcare information disseminations, as well as to segregate issues for the implementation and development of blockchain applications. We identify several major application domains that present research opportunities and challenges for the future advancements and directions for the benefits of IS researchers and professionals.

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Can Blockchain technologies help tackle the opioid epidemic: A Narrative Review

Cited by 26 publications

References 2 publications

Combating Health Care Fraud and Abuse: Conceptualization and Prototyping Study of a Blockchain Antifraud Framework

Combating Health Care Fraud and Abuse: Conceptualization and Prototyping Study of a Blockchain Antifraud Framework

An Overview of Existing Publications and Most Relevant Projects/Platforms on the Use of Blockchain in Medicine and Neurology

Blockchain in healthcare

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