Clinical Trials in the Realm of Health Informatics

Abstract

The healthcare industry has gone through many rapid changes due to the advancement of technology over the past years. Blockchain technology, cloud computing, microservices, Internet of Things, lab-on-chip, non-invasive surgeries, and so on have simplified several dreadful diseases. The impact of these new technologies on the healthcare industry is very visible. It can be noted that the cloud computing paradigm has helped in many ways to optimize resource utilization by the evolution of the application architecture on cloud. The shift from monolithic to service-oriented architecture to microservices and finally to serverless architecture is leading the industry to more independent and decentralized services in future. The health sensors in IoT support in tracking self-health check, early diagnosis, and treatment guidance by clinicians remotely without being in direct contact with patients. The distributed ledger in blockchain enables building medical information of patients globally with immutable data because of striking features of the blockchain such as data provenance, transparency, decentralized transaction validation, and immutability. We review the clinical trial (CT) processes and various methods used to automate the process in the realm of health.