The Use of Blockchain Technology in the Health Care Sector: Systematic Review

Abstract

Background Blockchain technology is a part of Industry 4.0’s new Internet of Things applications: decentralized systems, distributed ledgers, and immutable and cryptographically secure technology. This technology entails a series of transaction lists with identical copies shared and retained by different groups or parties. One field where blockchain technology has tremendous potential is health care, due to the more patient-centric approach to the health care system as well as blockchain’s ability to connect disparate systems and increase the accuracy of electronic health records. Objective The aim of this study was to systematically review studies on the use of blockchain technology in health care and to analyze the characteristics of the studies that have implemented blockchain technology. Methods This study used a systematic review methodology to find literature related to the implementation aspect of blockchain technology in health care. Relevant papers were searched for using PubMed, SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore, Embase, Scopus, and EBSCOhost. A quality assessment of literature was performed on the 22 selected papers by assessing their trustworthiness and relevance. Results After full screening, 22 papers were included. A table of evidence was constructed, and the results of the selected papers were interpreted. The results of scoring for measuring the quality of the publications were obtained and interpreted. Out of 22 papers, a total of 3 (14%) high-quality papers, 9 (41%) moderate-quality papers, and 10 (45%) low-quality papers were identified. Conclusions Blockchain technology was found to be useful in real health care environments, including for the management of electronic medical records, biomedical research and education, remote patient monitoring, pharmaceutical supply chains, health insurance claims, health data analytics, and other potential areas. The main reasons for the implementation of blockchain technology in the health care sector were identified as data integrity, access control, data logging, data versioning, and nonrepudiation. The findings could help the scientific community to understand the implementation aspect of blockchain technology. The results from this study help in recognizing the accessibility and use of blockchain technology in the health care sector.

The applicability of scarcity, originality, and transaction tracking characteristics of the dermatological industry and non‐fungible token

“…If you want to apply NFT to the beauty industry, you must first understand blockchain technology and virtual assets. Blockchain is defined as “a distributed digital book that shares content to all participants, unlike the traditional method of keeping records on a centralized server when trading data,” or “a technology that participants jointly record and manage by distributing ledger information to a P2P network rather than a central server of a specific institution.” 10 Blockchain is characterized by decentralized security, transparency, anonymity, and safety 11 . Blockchain began as a currency for financial transactions, but as it develops into intelligence and automation through smart contracts, it is being developed and applied in various business areas.…”

“…10 Blockchain is characterized by decentralized security, transparency, anonymity, and safety. 11 Blockchain began as a currency for financial transactions, but as it develops into intelligence and automation through smart contracts, it is being developed and applied in various business areas. Since it is expected to gradually expand to various areas by implementing hyper-connected societies such as government policies, medical care, transportation, sports, and internet of things (IoT) in the future, it is necessary to quickly prepare for application in the beauty industry, which is classified as essential consumer goods.…”

Blockchain Technology - A Algorithm for Drug Serialization

“…Blockchain technology provide safety, security, transparency and trust between patients and supply chain partners. Blockchain may mitigate the risk of counterfeiting in pharmaceutical industry, such as delivery of substandard or counterfeit medication, which may have a negative impact on patients [12] (Elangovan et al, 2022). Blockchain technology can be replaced to basic distributed database management system, which have generally been designed with structured query language or similar input.…”

Addressing the Challenges of Electronic Health Records Using Blockchain and IPFS

“…To ensure the papers included are trustworthy and suitable for this systematic review, the quality of the papers is assessed using two methods. The first method adapted from previous SLRs [ 34 , 35 , 36 ] is applied by setting quality evaluation (QE) questions. Each of these QEs are answerable by no (0), partially (1), or yes (2).…”