Trends in Blockchain Applied to Healthcare

Abstract

This study systematically maps Blockchain tech-nology's role in healthcare, aiming to summarize the domain and pinpoint future research directions. It assesses blockchain's characteristics, issues, platforms, and challenges within health-care, analyzing 35 publications from the Scopus database. The findings underscore blockchain's capacity to remodel healthcare through decentralized structures, enhanced data security, and improved interoperability, detailing the platforms and technolo-gies driving blockchain application development. Key challenges are highlighted, such as scalability, interoperability, privacy, and compliance. While acknowledging blockchain's potential to advance healthcare data handling, the study calls for a multi-stakeholder collaborative effort to tackle technical and regulatory hurdles. The research's primary focus on technology may need to include broader policy and regulatory challenges.