A Comprehensive Study on the Use of Blockchain Technology in Healthcare

Muhammed Miah

Abstract


Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential solution to improve healthcare services by offering secure, transparent and efficient management of healthcare data. The paper presents an overview of the applications, benefits, challenges and recommendations for using Blockchain technology in healthcare. A systematic literature review has been conducted to identify relevant articles published in recent years, using the PRISMA framework to ensure methodological rigor. The review has revealed that Blockchain technology can be used in various healthcare applications, including data management, drug supply chain management, clinical trials, medical record keeping, and telemedicine. Blockchain technology offers several benefits in healthcare, such as secure and efficient data sharing, real-time access to patient data, improved patient outcomes, and lower costs. However, the adoption of Blockchain technology in healthcare also presents some challenges, such as regulatory barriers, interoperability issues, data privacy and security concerns, and technical limitations. To overcome these challenges, recommendations are provided, including developing a regulatory framework, addressing interoperability issues, implementing robust data privacy and security measures, and investing in Blockchain technology research and development.

Keywords:
Blockchain, distributed ledger; disrupted technology; healthcare

Full Text:

 PDF

References


M. Miah, S.J. Miah, and S. Venkatraman, “Blockchain: At a glance idea for information science researchers,” Journal of Information and Optimization Sciences, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 1589–1624, Dec. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/02522667.2021.1930644

S. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system, 2008. [Online]. Available: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

M. Miah, “A comprehensive data analytics study on the use of blockchain technology in real estate,” International Journal of Engineering Science and Computing, vol. 12, no. 10, 2022.

L. A. Linn and M. B. Koo, “Blockchain for health data and its potential use in health IT and health care related research,” in ONC/NIST Use of Blockchain for Healthcare and Research Workshop, 2016, pp. 1–10. [Online]. Available: https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/11-74-ablockchainforhealthcare.pdf

K. Joshi, S. Sarkar, and V. Patel, “Data lakes: A review of current state of the art and future directions,” ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD), vol. 12, no. 5, pp. 1–23, 2018.

A. A. Siyal et al., “Applications of blockchain technology in medicine and healthcare: Challenges and future perspectives,” Cryptography, vol. 3, no. 1, Jan. 2019. https://doi.org/10.3390/cryptography3010003

A. Ekblaw, A. Azaria, T. Vieira, and A. Lippman, “MedRec: Using blockchain for medical data access and permission management,” in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Open and Big Data (OBD), Vienna, Austria, Aug. 2016, pp. 452–461. https://doi.org/10.1109/OBD.2016.11

J. V. Brocke, A. Simons, K. Riemer, B. Niehaves, R. Plattfaut, and A. Cleven, “Standing on the shoulders of giants: Challenges and recommendations of literature search in information systems research,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems, vol. 37, no. 9, pp. 205–224, Aug. 2015. https://doi.org/10.17705/1CAIS.03709

D. Moher, A. Liberati, J. Tetzlaff, D.G. Altman, and T.P. Group, “Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: The PRISMA statement,” PLoS Medicine, vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 4419–4424, Jul. 2009. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097

C. S. Kruse, R. Goswamy, Y. Raval, and S. Marawi, “Challenges and opportunities of big data in health care: A systematic review,” JMIR Medical Informatics, vol. 4, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2016, Art. no. e38. https://doi.org/10.2196/medinform.5359

R. B. Fekih and M. Lahami, “Application of blockchain technology in healthcare: A comprehensive study,” in International Conference on Smart Homes and Health Telematics (ICOST): The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries, 2020, pp. 268–276. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51517-1_23

T. Justinia, “Blockchain technologies: Opportunities for solving real-world problems in healthcare and biomedical sciences,” Acta Informatica Medica, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 284–291, 2019. https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2019.27.284-291

G. S. Aujla and A. Jindal, “A decoupled blockchain approach for edge-envisioned IoT-based healthcare monitoring,” IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 491–499, Sep. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSAC.2020.3020655

S. Saha, A. K. Sutrala, A. K. Das, N. Kumar, and J. J. P. C. Rodrigues, “On the design of blockchain-based access control protocol for IoT-enabled healthcare applications,” in IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Dublin, Ireland, Jun. 2020, pp. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC40277.2020.9148915

J. Xu, K. Xue, S. Li, H. Tian, J. Hong, P. Hong, and N. Yu, “Healthchain: A blockchain-based privacy preserving scheme for large-scale health data,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 5, pp. 8770–8781, Oct. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2019.2923525

Y. Zhang, D. Zheng, and R.H. Deng, “Security and privacy in smart health: Efficient policy-hiding attribute-based access control,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 2130–2145, Jun. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2825289

M. Li, S. Yu, Y. Zheng, K. Ren, and W. Lou, “Scalable and secure sharing of personal health records in cloud computing using attribute-based encryption,” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 131–143, Jan. 2013. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2012.97

Y. Zhang, C. Xu, H. Li, K. Yang, J. Zhou, and X. Lin, “HealthDep: An efficient and secure deduplication scheme for cloud-assisted eHealth systems,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, vol. 14, no. 9, pp. 4101–4112, May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2018.2832251

J. Hua, H. Zhu, F. Wang, X. Liu, R. Lu, H. Li, and Y. Zhang, “CINEMA: Efficient and privacy-preserving online medical primary diagnosis with skyline query,” IEEE Internet Things Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1450–1461, May 2019. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2834156

Z. Shae and J. J. P. Tsai, “On the design of a Blockchain platform for clinical trial and precision medicine,” in Proc. IEEE 37th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), Atlanta, GA, USA, Jul. 2017, pp. 1972–1980. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.2017.61

C. Esposito, A.D. Santis, G. Tortora, H. Chang, and K. Choo, “Blockchain: A panacea for healthcare cloud-based data security and privacy?” IEEE Cloud Computing, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 31–37, Mar. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCC.2018.011791712

A. Ouaddah, A.A. Kalam, and A.A. Ouahman, “FairAccess: A new blockchain-based access control framework for the Internet of Things,” Secur. Commun. Networks, vol. 9, pp. 5943–5964, Feb. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1002/sec.1748

O. Novo, “Blockchain meets IoT: An architecture for scalable access management in IoT,” IEEE Internet of Things Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1184–1195, Mar. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2018.2812239

A.A. Omar, M.S. Rahman, A. Basu, and S. Kiyomoto, “MediBchain: A blockchain based privacy preserving platform for healthcare data,” in Security, Privacy, and Anonymity in Computation, Communication, and Storage. SpaCCS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, G. Wang, M. Atiquzzaman, Z. Yan, and K.K. Choo, Eds., vol. 10658. Springer, Cham., 2017, pp. 534–543. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72395-2_49

X. Zhang and S. Poslad, “Blockchain support for flexible queries with granular access control to electronic medical records (EMR),” in 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Kansas City, MO, USA, May 2018, pp. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICC.2018.8422883

X. Yue, H. Wang, D. Jin, M. Li, and W. Jiang, “Healthcare data gateways: Found healthcare intelligence on blockchain with novel privacy risk control,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 40, no. 10, Aug. 2016, Art. no. 218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-016-0574-6

A. Azaria, A. Ekblaw, T. Vieira, and A. Lippman, “MedRec: Using blockchain for medical data access and permission management,” in 2016 2nd International Conference on Open and Big Data (OBD), Vienna, Austria, Aug. 2016, pp. 25–30. https://doi.org/10.1109/OBD.2016.11

G.G. Dagher, J. Mohler, M. Milojkovic, and P.B. Marella, “Ancile: Privacy-preserving framework for access control and interoperability of electronic health records using blockchain technology,” Sustainable Cities and Society, vol. 39, pp. 283–297, May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2018.02.014

H. D. Zubaydi, Y.W. Chong, K. Ko, S.M. Hanshi, and S. Karuppayah, “A review on the role of blockchain technology in the healthcare domain,” Electronics, vol. 8, no. 6, Jun. 2019, Art. no. 679. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics8060679

M. Swan, Blockchain: Blueprint for a new economy, 1st ed. O’Reilly Media Inc., USA, 2015.

T. McGhin, K.K.R. Choo, C.Z. Liu, and D. He, “Blockchain in healthcare applications: Research challenges and opportunities,” Journal of Network and Computer Applications, vol. 135, pp. 62–75, Jun. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2019.02.027

M. Kassab, J. DeFranco, T. Malas, P. Laplante, G. Destefanis, and V.G. Neto, “Exploring research in blockchain for healthcare and a roadmap for the future,” in IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 1835–1852, Oct.-Dec. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1109/TETC.2019.2936881

A. Zhang and X. Lin, “Towards secure and privacy-preserving data sharing in e-health systems via consortium Blockchain,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 42, Jun 2018, Art. no. 140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-018-0995-5

K. Khujamatov, E. Reypnazarov, N. Akhmedov, and D. Khasanov, “Blockchain for 5G healthcare architecture,” in 2020 International Conference on Information Science and Communications Technologies (ICISCT), Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Nov. 2020, pp. 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICISCT50599.2020.9351398

A. G. M. Alzahrani, A. Alenezi, A. Mershed, H. Atlam, F. Mousa, and G. Wills, “A framework for data sharing between healthcare providers using Blockchain,” in IoTBDS 2020 – Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Internet of Things, Big Data and Security, vol. 1, SciTePress, 2020, pp. 349–358. https://doi.org/10.5220/0009413403490358

P. Ratta, A. Kaur, S. Sharma, M. Shabaz, and G. Dhiman, “Application of blockchain and Internet of Things in healthcare and medical sector: Applications, challenges, and future perspectives,” Journal of Food Quality, vol. 2021, May 2021, Art. no. 7608296. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/7608296

P. P. Ray, K. Neeraj, and D. Dash, “BLWN: Blockchain-based lightweight simplified payment verification in IoT-assisted e-healthcare,” IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 134–145, Mar. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2020.2968614

I. Yaqoob, K. Salah, R. Jayaraman, and Y. Al-Hammadi, “Blockchain for healthcare data management: opportunities, challenges, and future recommendations,” Neural Computing and Applications, vol. 34, pp. 11475–11490, Jul. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-020-05519-w

W. J. Gordon and C. Catalini, “Blockchain technology for healthcare: facilitating the transition to patient-driven interoperability,” Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, vol. 16, pp. 224–230, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csbj.2018.06.003

R. El-Gazzar and K. Stendal, “Blockchain in health care: Hope or hype?” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 22, no. 7, Jul. 2020. https://doi.org/10.2196/17199

T. T. Kuo, H. E. Kim, and L. Ohno-Machado, “Blockchain distributed ledger technologies for biomedical and health care applications,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: JAMIA, vol. 24, no. 6, pp. 1211–1220, Nov. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocx068

T. H. Choi, J. H. Kim, and S. Kim, “Blockchain for patient data sharing: A systematic review,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 1–13, 2019.

P. Zhang, D. C. Schmidt, J. White, and G. Lenz, “Blockchain technology use cases in healthcare: A systematic review,” Healthcare, vol. 8, no. 4, 2020, Art. no. 431.

P. Singh, O. P. Yadav, and S. K. Singh, “Use of blockchain technology in healthcare: A comprehensive study,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 44, no. 7, 2020, Art. no. 124.

M. M. Arafat, A. Al-Yasiri, and A. Benlamri, “Blockchain technology for healthcare and biomedical sciences: A review,” Journal of Medical Systems, vol. 43, no. 8, 2019, Art. no. 233.

P. R. Brindley and K. J. Miller, “Blockchain: An emerging solution for drug supply chain management,” Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 54–67, 2019.

N. Ahmed and J. Miller, “The promise of blockchain technology in healthcare credentialing,” The Journal of Medical Practice Management: MPM, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 43–46, 2020.

M. Al Omar, H. Khan, M. Yaqoob, and A. Zomaya, “Blockchain technology for healthcare and biomedical sciences: A Review,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 134782–134796, 2020.

R. C. Gupta, D. Dey, A. Rakesh, and N. Gupta, “Blockchain technology for healthcare: A review,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Inventive Communication and Computational Technologies, 2019, pp. 649–654.

V. K. Dubovitskaya, A. Xu, K. Ryu, and B. Schenker, “Blockchain applications for healthcare data management,” Health Informatics Journal, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 1190–1205, 2019.

S. M. Soltani, N. Monajemi, and H. Kouhizadeh, “Blockchain technology in healthcare: A comprehensive review and directions for future research,” Applied Sciences, vol. 8, no. 9, 2018, Art. no. 1645.

R. W. Ying, H. L. Zhang, and C. H. Zhang, “Blockchain and healthcare in China: Facing the COVID-19 outbreak,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 17, no. 14, 2020, Art. no. 5169.

J. T. Liu, X. X. Ma, Y. H. Zhang, and W. H. Tang, “The potential of blockchain technology in medical sciences research,” Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 233–245, 2018.




DOI: 10.7250/itms-2023-0001

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2023 Muhammed Miah

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.