Blockchain in Healthcare: A Patient-Centered Model

Blockchain in Healthcare Today, 2024

Blockchain's transformative potential, its current applications, and the path forward for its integration into the healthcare ecosystem are all explored in the journal Blockchain in Healthcare Today. The healthcare industry is facing significant challenges and opportunities after COVID-19. As we navigate the complexities of increasing healthcare costs and technological updates for better patient outcomes, innovative technologies are emerging as pivotal tools for healthcare transformation. Healthcare digital platforms have witnessed revolutionizing the dynamics of healthcare systems using disruptive technologies. However, while these technologies have garnered extensive attention for their transformative potential, there remains a critical gap in our understanding of the impact of digital technology on the healthcare industry. Population health management has critical challenges in data protection, sharing, and interoperability, where personalized medicines and wearable devices are highlighted as a concern. Patients and medical personnel need a safe and simple way to record, transmit, or access information through networks without concern for their safety. Using blockchain technology can help address these problems. Blockchain technology enhances medical data security by providing a decentralized, immutable ledger that ensures data integrity, transparency, and privacy. It enables fine-grained access control, improves interoperability, and resists cyber-attacks. Streamlining regulatory compliance allows patients and medical personnel to safely record, transmit, and access sensitive information across networks.

Australasian Journal of Information Systems

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 f...

2021

There are a few issues found because of the absence of traceability of transactions in healthcare services. Healthcare information split across numerous silos adversely influences research activities and administrations. There were no reported cases of about half of the clinical preliminaries. The expense of medication disclosure is ever-expanding, and unsatisfactory and fake medicines are as yet an enormous issue. Blockchain has the potential to address such substantial problems. Blockchain technology is a distributed and secure database organized by various groups to store and offers a permanent online transaction record. Blockchain has numerous medicinal services applications and can improve mobile health applications, preliminary clinical information, and insurance information storage. Each of the blocks has an independent unit holding its report and a dependent link that makes regulated by participants who store and share the data without third-party intervention. The blockchai...

Blockchain in Healthcare Today, 2019

Technological advancements have proven to be indispensable for improving patient care, yet they continue to present a host of problems. One of the most pressing concerns is how to improve quality of care while controlling costs. Beyond clinical care, one plausible solution is to share patient information freely and efficiently. Hospitals and clinics may share data internally, but external information sharing remains an issue. Despite the digitization of medical records, there remains a lack of adequate computing infrastructure or unwillingness to share data among providers. Care quality often suffers as a result. Implementing a type of peer-to-peer distributed digital technology, known as a blockchain, to record and transmit transactional data could be a solution to these concerns. Originally, blockchain was developed to record cryptocurrency transactions. However, as blockchain technologies have matured and adopted across dissimilar industries, the feasibility of possible applications of blockchain technology in healthcare is getting more attention. This article explores possible opportunities of adoption of blockchain technology to improve patient data security, privacy, and care while outlining the challenges that practitioners may encounter

Blockchain technology is increasingly being applied in healthcare to enhance data security, transparency, and efficiency. It enables secure data exchange between hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and physicians while minimizing errors and risks. Blockchain improves medical record analysis and ensures data integrity in clinical trials, reducing the risk of manipulation. The discussion covered capabilities, enablers, and a unified workflow of Blockchain in healthcare, along with 14 key applications. The technology enhances data storage security, decentralization, interconnectivity, accountability, and authentication, addressing privacy concerns and preventing cyber threats.

ANZ Journal of Surgery, 2020

Blockchain technology is one of the many disruptive technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that will irrevocably change the way we live and work. These technologies are well embedded in the areas of global finance, health care and defence, to name a few. This review focuses on the relevance of blockchain technology to health care. Blockchain technology will be the unifying platform for sharing patient data currently inaccessible due to the siloed architecture of legacy software systems, and as a result potentially be the basis for precision or individualized patient treatment. It will also strengthen digital security of sensitive patient data that is presently a lucrative target for cyber criminals. In the current COVID-19 environment, clinicians will rely more on telehealth to reduce person-to-person contact. This service can be delivered by the clinical team with confidence in the veracity of the patient data made accessible through the blockchain platform. Smart contracts written on the blockchain platform will reduce the possibility of international humanitarian aid to low-and middle-income countries being misspent. The pharmaceutical supply chain industry is adopting blockchain technology to ensure supply chain provenance. Similarly, the health insurance industry recognizes how the blockchain ecosystem can improve services to its members and expedite reimbursements to clinicians.

Blockchain is a technology designed to manage electronic data that has the potential to support transparency and accountability. A blockchain is a ledger of transactions where an identical copy is visible to all the members of a computer network. Blockchain is an emerging technology being applied for creating innovative solutions in various sectors, including healthcare. A Blockchain network is used in the healthcare system to preserve and exchange patient data through hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, pharmacy firms, and physicians. Blockchain applications can accurately identify severe mistakes and even dangerous ones in the medical field. Thus, it can improve the performance, security, and transparency of sharing medical data in the health care system. This technology is helpful to medical institutions to gain insight and enhance the analysis of medical records. In this paper, we studied Blockchain technology and its significant benefits in healthcare. Finally, the paper identifies significant applications including network infrastructure security, identity verification, authentication along with the uniform patterns of authorization to access electronic health information and challenges of blockchain for healthcare.

Informology, 2023

Healthcare information systems aim to provide high-quality healthcare services to ensure the security of patients’ health information. They can also assist in safeguarding an encyclopedia of clinical data to make more informed decisions in a private environment. However, the majority of today’s healthcare information systems are centralized and have great difficulty in providing indispensable information security and privacy, patient health records immutability, transparency, and flexibility to detect vulnerabilities and cyber invasions. The current study has explored the striking benefits and opportunities for blockchain technology in the healthcare information systems sector. It has identified the key applications that blockchain technology offers to provide indispensable information security and privacy, the immutability of patient health records, transparency, and flexibility to detect vulnerabilities and cyber invasions. Blockchain technology as a regulatory technology can enhance healthcare information services by bringing high-quality healthcare services in a crystal clear view that is decentralized, immutable, tamper-resistant, flexible, traceable, and secure. It also enables clinical professionals to effectively detect vulnerabilities and cyber invasions related to patients’ health information. The practical deployment of blockchain technology in healthcare information systems takes years of research and experience to reach fruition. In order to enable the practical deployment of blockchain technology in healthcare information systems, a series of research will need to be conducted.

Blockchain can be described as a distributed ledger technology capable of recording safe and continuous transactions between parties. It is an emerging technology that has drawn considerable interest financial institutions, energy supply firms, academic community and also the healthcare industry. Blockchain promises transparent, tamper-proof and secure systems that can enable novel solutions especially when combined with smart contracts. Decentralization is a significant characteristic of blockchain that can benefit healthcare applications, making it possible to implement distributed healthcare apps that do not depend on a centralized authority. In addition, the fact that the information in the blockchain is duplicated among all the nodes in the network creates an environment of transparency and openness that allows healthcare stakeholders, and patients in particular, to understand how their data is used, by whom, when and how. This paper presents a review on the application of blockchain to the health care sector.

ATBU Journal of Science, Technology and Education, 2021

Blockchain Technology (BT) is a secured ledger that has the potential to enhance the safety, quality as well as efficiency of healthcare provision. This will benefit healthcare administrators and healthcare end-users. This paper is focused on expanding the significance of blockchain technology in healthcare information. It identifies those aspects that are not being recorded by many researchers in establishing the prospects of Blockchain Technology in the healthcare domain. Accordingly, the paper looked at Blockchain involvement in administering healthcare services such as telemedicine, health information exchange, and electronic prescribing. The review can discover the huge potential of Blockchain technology in healthcare such as in storing healthcare data on a shared Block that is accessible to concerned stakeholders without undue privacy distresses. This research provides the desired guide and identified open perspectives for researchers that will improve the level of adoption of Blockchain in the healthcare domain.

2018

The paper analyses the possibility of using blockchain technologies in the sphere of Healthcare. Modern society requires new tools, e.g. distributed ledger and smart contracts for sharing data between patients, doctors and healthcare professionals by giving them control over the data and allowing smarter cooperation. In this situation, utilizing blockchain technology can resolve integrity, data privacy, security and fraud issues, increase patient health autonomy and provide access to better services. This paper provides a review of blockchain technology and research of possible applications in healthcare, gives an overview of positive trends and outputs.

Revolutionizing Digital Healthcare Through Blockchain Technology Applications, 2023

Recent developments in blockchain technology have made it an increasingly interesting subject of research. In addition to financial applications, many studies are being conducted to explore its potential outside of this realm. The healthcare sector is one of the most relevant fields where blockchain has the potential to have a major impact. There have been rapid advances in blockchain implementation and understanding, particularly in this field in recent years. With superior privacy capabilities, blockchain technology is an excellent tool to deliver information and services in the healthcare sector. While these developments are a positive sign, a few issues still need to be addressed in order to make a significant difference. The chapter discusses key fundamentals of blockchain technology, potential applications in several fields of health care, obstacles to the adoption of blockchain technology, as well as the concerns it aims to alleviate in the healthcare industry going forward.

BHTY, 2018

There are several areas of healthcare and well-being that could be enhanced using blockchain technologies. These include device tracking, clinical trials, pharmaceutical tracing, and health insurance. Within device tracking, hospitals can trace their asset within a blockchain infrastructure, including through the complete lifecycle of a device. The information gathered can then be used to improve patient safety and provide after-market analysis to improve efficiency savings. This paper outlines recent work within the areas of pharmaceutical traceability, data sharing, clinical trials, and device tracking.

International journal of health sciences, 2022

Rapid development and technological advancement have brought a lot of changes in the health industry. It makes use of a variety of technologies, including the Internet of Things” IoT and “Blockchain”. These innovations are being used in a variety of applications connected to daily healthcare activities. According to the Global Blockchain Study, numerous firms in several areas, including medical, are extending, their Blockchain activities. Even though “blockchain technology” has attracted a lot of attention in the last decade, there are still many barriers to its incorporation with IoT systems[17] and use in the medical industry. Blockchain technology is used to secure healthcare-related information securely to increase cybersecurity in the healthcare sector. A mixed-method (Primary Qualitative and Secondary Quantitative) is used to collect relevant data related to Blockchain technology in Health care.

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, NURSING AND MEDICAL RESCUE, 2019

Introduction. The foundation of an effective model of health care is an efficient IT system. Nevertheless, over half a century of evolution of technological solutions used in such systems did not fully bring expected results. What is more, the implementation of extremely fast developing ICT technologies in the health care sector does not translate into a significant improvement in its quality, effectiveness and cost reduction. One of the currently developing concepts for solving the above problems may be the use of blockchain technology.. The aim of the study. The aim of the study was to present selected issues, examples and perspectives of blockchain application in healthcare. Selection of material. The search was conducted in the Scopus database using the following terms: blockchain, IT system, healthcare 2018-2019. The literature found in the Google Scholar database was analyzed in terms of the highest number of quotations. Such selected literature was used as a material for the preparation of the present paper. Conclusions. Blockchain technology is a particularly welcome solution at a time when traditional "endpoint" protection in information management systems is losing its meaning. Despite the fact that the concept and methodology describing the model of information processing in the chain of blocks has a known characteristic, its embedding in information management processes in the Polish healthcare system is still at an early stage.