Blockchain Papers

Frans Lavdari

No abstract is available for this record.

Alan G. Futerman, Ernesto Edwards

This paper explores the evolving landscape of digital currencies, focusing on the contrasting characteristics and implications of Bitcoin, stablecoins, and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). While Bitcoin emerged as a decentralized, privacy-focused alternative to traditional financial systems, CBDCs represent a centralized approach to digital money, potentially enabling unprecedented levels of government surveillance and control. Through an analysis of the fundamental differences between these forms of currency, the paper highlights the risks associated with CBDCs, including threats to individual privacy, financial autonomy, and the potential for regulatory overreach. The study also examines the potential consequences of CBDC adoption, such as programmable money and its implications for economic freedom, while considering the broader impact on the global financial system. Ultimately, this paper argues that while CBDCs are often promoted as a more efficient and secure means of digital transactions, they pose significant dangers that could undermine the principles of decentralization and privacy championed by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Arockia Anto Deepak R, Abishai Daniel S, S. Lakshmi Sankar M.

The pharmaceutical industry faces critical challenges related to counterfeit drugs, poor traceability, and lack of transparency in supply chain management. To address these issues, this project proposes MedSupplyChain, a blockchain-based drug tracking and verification system that ensures secure, transparent, and tamper-proof management of pharmaceutical supply chains. The system leverages Ethereum smart contracts to automate key operations such as drug batch registration, transfer of ownership, and recall management with role-based access control for manufacturers, distributors, and regulators. Decentralized storage using IPFS is integrated to securely store certificates, testing reports, and product images, while only their hash values are recorded on the blockchain to maintain efficiency and scalability. The frontend DApp, built with React.js and connected via Web3.js/Ethers.js, provides user specific dashboards for stakeholders and enables real-time verification of drug authenticity. Patients, pharmacists, and regulators can easily track and verify drug batches using batch IDs, ensuring accountability and trust across the supply chain. This approach not only reduces the risks of counterfeit drugs but also improves regulatory compliance, operational transparency, and stakeholder collaboration. By combining blockchain's immutability with decentralized storage, MedSupplyChain establishes a secure, efficient, and trustworthy foundation for modernizing pharmaceutical logistics.

Sarah Rondeaux, Muriel Schuetz Leuthold, Fatima Pires, Christel Tran · 5 authors

Switzerland’s healthcare system is complex, involving a regulated interplay among the federal, cantonal, and local governments. Swiss federalism classically gives power to the cantons, except in areas where the Constitution confers powers to the Confederation. In healthcare, the powers conferred to the Confederation are essentially of a legislative nature, and relate to the regulation of financing, quality and safety of medicines, certain areas of public health, as well as research and development [1]. Outpatient care is mainly provided by the private sector and is essentially based on a liberal system. Most healthcare professionals, including pharmacists, work independently in private care structures. This dynamic interplay between the public and private sectors, along with split responsibilities, significantly influences the system, resulting in a decentralized and fragmented healthcare framework [2]. This fragmentation extends to medicine reimbursement policies, which are regulated under the Federal Law on Compulsory Health Care (LAMal in French). Outpatient services are covered by the compulsory health insurance mandated for all residents of Switzerland, obtained from private health insurance providers [3]. The reimbursement and prices of prescribed medicines are strictly regulated by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), which evaluates whether the medicinal product meets the criteria of effectiveness, appropriateness, and cost-effectiveness before including it on the “List of Pharmaceutical Specialties” (LS). Medicines are either reimbursed if included in the LS or not, with no partial reimbursement. Furthermore, reimbursement may be limited to specific conditions, e.g. based on the clinical situation or the patient’s characteristics. In principle, reimbursement is restricted to indications and conditions of use approved by Swissmedic, the Swiss agency for therapeutic products.

Eziz, Aysajan

Do Ethereum's Layer-2 (L2) rollups actually decongest the Layer-1 (L1) mainnet once protocol upgrades and demand are held constant? Using a 1245-day daily panel from August 5, 2021 to December 31, 2024 that spans the London, Merge, and Dencun upgrades, we link Ethereum fee and congestion metrics to L2 user activity, macro-demand proxies, and targeted event indicators. We estimate a regime-aware error-correction model that treats posting-clean L2 user share as a continuous treatment. Over the pre-Dencun (London+Merge) window, a 10 percentage point increase in L2 adoption lowers median base fees by about 13% -- roughly 5 Gwei at pre-Dencun levels -- and deviations from the long-run relation decay with an 11-day half-life. Block utilization and a scarcity index show similar congestion relief. After Dencun, L2 adoption is already high and treatment support narrows, so blob-era estimates are statistically imprecise and we treat them as exploratory. The pre-Dencun window therefore delivers the first cross-regime causal estimate of how aggregate L2 adoption decongests Ethereum, together with a reusable template for monitoring rollup-centric scaling strategies.

Mutiullah Shaikh, Shafique Memon, Ali Ebrahimi, Uffe Kock Wiil

BACKGROUND: Healthcare information systems are hindered by delayed data sharing, privacy breaches, and lack of patient control over data. The growing need for secure, privacy-preserved access control interoperable in health informatics technology (HIT) systems appeals to solutions such as Blockchain (BC), which offers a decentralized, transparent, and immutable ledger architecture. However, its current adoption remains limited to conceptual or proofs-of-concept (PoCs), often relying on simulated datasets rather than validated real-world data or scenarios, necessitating further research into its pragmatic applications and their benchmarking. OBJECTIVE: This systematic literature review (SLR) aims to analyze BC-based healthcare implementations by benchmarking peer-reviewed studies and turning PoCs or production insights into real-world applications and their evaluation metrics. Unlike prior SLRs focusing on proposed or conceptual models, simulations, or limited-scale deployments, this review focuses on validating practical BC real-world applications in healthcare settings beyond conceptual studies and PoCs. METHODS: Adhering to PRISMA-2020 guidelines, we systematically searched five major databases (Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect) for high-precision relevant studies using MeSH terms related to BC in healthcare. The designed review protocol was registered with OSF, ensuring transparency in the review process, including study screening by independent reviewers, eligibility, quality assessment, and data extraction and synthesis. RESULTS: In total, 82 original studies fully met the eligibility criteria and narratively reported BC-based healthcare implementations with validated evaluation outcomes. These studies highlight the current challenges addressed by BC in healthcare settings, providing both qualitative and quantitative data synthesis on its effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: BC-based healthcare implementations show both qualitative and quantitative effectiveness, with advancements in areas such as drug traceability (up to 100%) and fraud prevention (95% reduction). We also discussed the recent challenges of focusing more attention in this area, along with a discussion on the mythological consideration of our own work. Our future research should focus on addressing scalability, privacy-preservation, security, integration, and ethical frameworks for widespread BC adoption for data-driven healthcare.

Kaoru Aguilera Katayama

YEAH!

Gnana Prakash Goli, Mauro Migliardi

No abstract is available for this record.

Don Roosan, Yanting Wu, Vineet Tatla, Yawen Li · 7 authors

No abstract is available for this record.

Ryan W. Seaberg, Tyler R. Seaberg, David C. Seaberg

Objective: Distributed ledger technology can be used as a transparent, shareable ledger, that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a more secure, verifiable, and permanent way than the current electronic prescribing systems. We studied the use of a distributed ledger electronic prescribing programme, Prescription Abuse Greatly Reduced (PAGR) Prescriptions, to examine the effect of blockchain on provider prescribing efficiency at three family medicine clinics. Design: The PAGR was installed side-by-side to the electronic health record at three family medicine practice clinics in middle Tennessee. A prospective, convenience sample of patients at all three clinics was used for analysis. Trained observers were used in each clinic to document the side-by-side use of current prescribing practice versus the use of the PAGR electronic prescribing system by the individual providers.The primary outcome was total time to write the prescription. Secondary metrics included compliance with checking the state's Physician Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP.) , accuracy of medicine reconciliation, use of patient's eligibility on insurance, prescription benefits, and change in prescription caused by benefits analysis or drug-interactions. Provider satisfaction was measure on a 4-point Likert scale.Data were analysed using two-tailed, paired Student T-tests with alpha set at 0.05. A sample size of 107 patients was calculated to have a power of 80% to detect a 50% change in the prescription writing time. Results: The primary outcome of total prescription writing time was 171 ± 41 sec for current prescribing practice versus 63 ± 15 sec for the PAGR system (p = 0.0006). All providers were extremely satisfied with the use of the PAGR programme. Conclusion: Use of the PAGR electronic prescription programme significantly saved a mean of 1 min 48 sec per written prescription at the three Family Medicine Clinics. The PAGR also provided accurate medicine reconciliation and complete PDMP checks for controlled substance prescriptions. The patient real-time benefits check and drug-drug and allergy-drug reviews resulted in the provider changing the prescription 28% of the time, enhancing safety and out-of-pocket patient expenses. Future enhancements include expanding the insurance benefits analysis and developing provider notifications when patients are non-compliant with filling their prescriptions.

Camden Thatcher, Subrata Acharya

No abstract is available for this record.

A Gilabert-Perramon

espanolLa gestion del medicamento en Catalunya consiste en un modelo integral que aborda toda la cadena del medicamento de forma integrada y transversal en el conjunto del sistema sanitario. Una vision integral que va desde el acceso al medicamento hasta la evaluacion de resultados pasando por las politicas de prescripcion, dispensacion, compra y utilizacion, buscando asi una coherencia entre el instrumento (el medicamento) y el resultado (la salud). Y una vision integrada que es fundamental para coordinar un modelo sanitario descentralizado donde las funciones de financiacion y de provision estan diferenciadas. Se trata de un sistema que pretende ir mas alla del gasto farmaceutico, centrado en el paciente y con una vision del medicamento como inversion en resultados en salud. En resumen, la politica del medicamento en Catalunya ha destacado por la introduccion de diferentes elementos innovadores tanto en las formas de gestion como en el desarrollo de herramientas para hacerla posible. Un modelo basado en la integralidad y transversalidad del proceso farmacoterapeutico, la gestion de la incertidumbre y el modelo colaborativo. EnglishThe management of medicines in Catalonia consists of an integral model that addresses the entire drug chain in an integrated and transversal way in the whole health system. An integral vision that goes from the access to the medication to the evaluation of results through the prescription, dispensation, purchase and use policies, seeking a coherence between the instrument (the medicine) and the outcome (health). And an integrated vision that is fundamental to coordinate a decentralized health model where financing and provision functions are differentiated. It is a system that aims to go beyond pharmaceutical spending, focused on the patient and with a vision of medicines as an investment in health. In summary, the drug policy in Catalonia has been highlighted by the introduction of different innovative elements both in the forms of management and in the development of tools to make it possible. A model based on the integrality and transversality of the pharmacotherapeutic process, the management of uncertainty and the collaborative model.

Per Hjerpe, Henrik Ohlsson, Ulf Lindblad, Kristina Bengtsson Boström · 5 authors

No abstract is available for this record.