Blockchain for Healthcare Systems

Abstract

Currently existing traditional healthcare systems have issues concerning privacy, integrity, security, and ease of use. The features of blockchain such as decentralization, immutability, accessibility, privacy, security, transparency, and integrity can help resolve these concerns and create a more patient-centric healthcare system. Blockchain technology helps eliminate third-party vendors and reduce dependency on a central authority in a distributed environment. The integrity and validity of patients’ records is maintained due to immutability, and privacy is ensured as it is cryptographically secure. Data exchanges between stakeholders can be brought under a single roof using blockchain. Some applications of blockchain in the healthcare sector are EHR (Electronic Health Record), monitoring of patients and pharmaceutical supply chains, health insurance claims, daily health data collection, and healthcare research. This chapter details the application of blockchain in healthcare systems. The following sections elaborate on the integration of blockchain technology in healthcare, the issues and challenges faced by the current traditional healthcare systems, the workflow, architecture and practical use cases of these systems, and some challenges to build these systems. Also, a case study of a decentralized application (DApp) for a blockchain-based medical data management system built using Ethereum Blockchain and IPFS (Interplanetary File System) is also explained.