A Technical Assessment of Blockchain in Healthcare with a Focus on Big Data

Abstract

New healthcare record management (HRM) systems have been introduced as technology has evolved to provide more efficient care. Since medical data is usually sensitive and must be protected from unauthorized access, attention must be paid to data integrity, patient privacy, and storage. Blockchain technology has been proposed in the literature to integrate healthcare information systems through a decentralized and unified network. However, the literature on blockchain in healthcare is full of promises that may not be true under certain conditions. In our paper, we evaluate the veracity and sophistication of some of the claims made in the literature. We go beyond performing a literature review and shed light on the weak technical aspects claimed about blockchain. In addition, we benefit from our technical assessment and suggest some future research directions to improve healthcare systems that use blockchain and big data solutions.