Blockchain in healthcare and health sciences—A scoping review

Hasselgren, Anton; Kralevska, Katina; Gligoroski, Danilo; Pedersen, Sindre Andre; Faxvaag, Arild

doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.104040

Cited by 486 publications

(296 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Along with the advance of blockchain, there are some new consensus algorithms such as Proof-of-stake (PoS), Byzantine Faulty Tolerant (BFT) [24]. Blockchain has proved its success in healthcare and biomedical applications with promising performances in terms of healthcare data privacy [25], secure data management [26], [27], and transparent medical data storage [28], [29]. Therefore, it is possible to apply in solving healthcare issues related to coronavirus epidemic.…”

Section: Old Blocks New Blockmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain and AI-based Solutions to Combat Coronavirus (COVID-19)-like Epidemics: A Survey

Nguyen¹,

Ding²,

Pathirana³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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The beginning of 2020 has seen the emergence of coronavirus outbreak caused by a novel virus called SARS-CoV-2. The sudden explosion and uncontrolled worldwide spread of COVID-19 show the limitations of existing healthcare systems to timely handle public health emergencies. In such contexts, innovative technologies such as blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have emerged as promising solutions for fighting coronavirus epidemic. On the one hand, blockchain can combat pandemics by enabling early detection of outbreaks, protecting user privacy, and ensuring reliable medical supply chain during the outbreak tracking. On the other hand, AI provides intelligent solutions for identifying symptoms caused by coronavirus for treatments and supporting drug manufacturing. Motivated by these, in this paper we present an extensive survey on the use of blockchain and AI for combating coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemics based on the rapidly emerging literature. First, we introduce a new conceptual architecture which integrates blockchain and AI specific for COVID-19 fighting. Particularly, we highlight the key solutions that blockchain and AI can provide to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. Then, we survey the latest research efforts on the use of blockchain and AI for COVID-19 fighting in a wide range of applications. The newly emerging projects and use cases enabled by these technologies to deal with coronavirus pandemic are also presented. Finally, we point out challenges and future directions that motivate more research efforts to deal with future coronavirus-like epidemics.

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Section: Old Blocks New Blockmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blockchain and AI-based Solutions to Combat Coronavirus (COVID-19)-like Epidemics: A Survey

Nguyen¹,

Ding²,

Pathirana³

et al. 2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…The implementation of blockchain technology has been clearly dominant in the financial industry [ 3 ], the supply chain industry [ 4 ], the payments industry [ 5 , 6 ], and e-commerce [ 7 ]. The health care sector can potentially benefit from blockchain technology by making health care information systems patient-centric and facilitating health data–sharing securely and efficiently [ 8 ]. A plethora of studies have proposed various potential use cases for using blockchain in health care [ 8 - 10 ]; however, the vast majority of those proposed use cases were not implemented [ 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The health care sector can potentially benefit from blockchain technology by making health care information systems patient-centric and facilitating health data–sharing securely and efficiently [ 8 ]. A plethora of studies have proposed various potential use cases for using blockchain in health care [ 8 - 10 ]; however, the vast majority of those proposed use cases were not implemented [ 10 ]. In their recent literature review, Hasselgren et al [ 8 ] analyzed 39 studies on blockchain in health care that proposed solutions that were implemented as proof of concept.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The common use cases that benefit from blockchain-based solutions for a patient-centric health care information system include patient-managed health records, enhanced insurance claim processes, enhanced health care research, and advanced medical records shared among patients and health care providers [ 11 ]. Despite the suitability of blockchain solutions for problems and innovation needs in health care information systems, the feasibility of fully implementing those solutions is scarce to moderate [ 8 ]. Even if some solutions have proven feasible to implement into practice, they require reductions in data size and operating costs, as well as better protection of personal information to maintain privacy and security [ 12 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Blockchain in Health Care: Hope or Hype?

El-Gazzar¹,

Stendal²

2020

J Med Internet Res

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There has been an increasing interest in blockchain technology from the health care sector in the last couple of years. The value proposition for using blockchain technology in the health care sector is to share sensitive patient data among health care entities securely and to empower patients. Blockchain technology allows patients to have an active role in developing and updating their own patient data. However, is blockchain technology really the silver bullet it seems to be? With this paper, we aim to understand the benefits and challenges of blockchain technology in the health care sector. We discuss innovation and security implications concerning blockchain technology in health care. Furthermore, we show that there is a need for more use cases to ensure the secure sharing of data within the health care sector. In our opinion, blockchain technology will not solve the issues encountered by the health care sector; in fact, it may raise more issues than it will solve.

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“…The predefined rules among the participating organizations are translated into smart contract functions to establish trust [19]. Smart contracts have been extensively practiced in existing systems that are proposed to digitize healthcare services [20]. More specifically, the existing studies have mainly focused on securing EHR of patients [10,16], traceability of COVID-19 patients [21,22], end-to-end drugs traceability [18,23], and automation of telemedicine industry [14,24,25].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Telehealth and Telemedicine

Ahmad¹,

Salah²,

Jayaraman³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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<div><b>Objectives: </b>Telehealth and telemedicine systems aim to deliver remote healthcare services to mitigate the spread of COVID‐19. Also, they can help to manage scarce healthcare resources to control the massive burden of COVID-19 patients in hospitals. However, a large portion of today's telehealth and telemedicine systems are centralized and fall short of providing necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Methods: </b>The current study has explored the potential opportunities and adaptability challenges for blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine sector. It has explored the key role that blockchain technology can play to provide necessary information security and privacy, operational transparency, health records immutability, and traceability to detect frauds related to patients' insurance claims and physician credentials.</div><div><b>Results: </b>Blockchain technology can improve telehealth and telemedicine services by offering remote healthcare services in a manner that is decentralized, tamper-proof, transparent, traceable, reliable, trustful, and secure. It enables health professionals to accurately identify frauds related to physician educational credentials and medical testing kits commonly used for home-based diagnosis.</div><div><b>Conclusions: </b>Wide deployment of blockchain in telehealth and telemedicine technology is still in its infancy. Several challenges and research problems need to be resolved to enable the widespread adoption of blockchain technology in telehealth and telemedicine systems.</div><div> </div><div><br></div>

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Blockchain in healthcare and health sciences—A scoping review

Cited by 486 publications

References 22 publications

Blockchain and AI-based Solutions to Combat Coronavirus (COVID-19)-like Epidemics: A Survey

Blockchain and AI-based Solutions to Combat Coronavirus (COVID-19)-like Epidemics: A Survey

Blockchain in Health Care: Hope or Hype?

The Role of Blockchain Technology in Telehealth and Telemedicine

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