4 - Blockchain applications for the healthcare sector: Uses beyond Bitcoin

Abstract

The year 2020 will always be remembered as a catastrophic year since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 (coronavirus) as a pandemic. The sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the drawbacks in our healthcare systems to handle public health emergencies. It is clear that implementing cutting-edge technology such as blockchain can aid in reducing the devastating effects of healthcare mishaps and promote efficient planning operations and resource deployment. In the healthcare sector, blockchain technology has the potential to improve clinical trial data management by minimizing regulatory approval delays and revitalizing communication between various parties in the supply chain, among other things. Furthermore, the propagation of misinformation has accelerated in recent years, and existing platforms lack the ability to verify the accuracy of data, resulting in public alarm and irrational behavior. As a result, building a blockchain-based tracking system is critical to ensuring that any data related to healthcare are collected in an accurate and trustworthy manner. Blockchain is a decentralized distributed ledger distribution technology that can make data processing, provenance, and authentication simpler and has the potential to disrupt healthcare. Blockchain is being actively explored in the health sector to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient quality, improve compliance, and make better use of data relevant to healthcare. Nevertheless, the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider specific healthcare needs from the different viewpoints of clients, patients, providers, and regulators is crucial in determining whether blockchain will fulfill the excitement of a technology described as “revolutionary” and “disruptive.” In addition, blockchain approaches must also be attentive to the specific problems facing healthcare relative to other sectors of the economy, in response to the actual needs of healthcare stakeholders. There have been many proposed implementations of blockchain in the healthcare sector, such as electronic health record (EHR) systems. In this chapter, we review the motivations of inculcating blockchain in currently existing EHR systems. The content of this chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 discusses a brief introduction of blockchain along with the EHR system and the current implementation of blockchain in the medical industry. The second section provides a deeper insight into the importance of mobile health, remote monitoring, and the motivations for using blockchain-based EHR systems. The third section will cover the details of a patient-centered blockchain model along with its promising features. The development of the COVID-19 pandemic has created a slew of difficulties around the world. The use of blockchain technology is critical in developing a platform for effectively managing the COVID-19 pandemic. The lack of a precise mechanism to detect new infections and anticipate the coronavirus infection risk is the largest difficulty facing most nations. The numerous characteristics of blockchain technology, such as decentralization, transparency, and immutability, can aid in pandemic management by detecting breakouts early, expediting drug distribution, and safeguarding user privacy while undergoing treatment. In this chapter, we examine blockchain applications and potential in the fight against COVID-19, demonstrating that the proposed solution is cost-effective and assures data integrity, security, transparency, and traceability among stakeholders during the pandemic. The last section is the conclusion.