Use of blockchain in healthcare: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Blockchain is an emerging field which works on the concept of a digitally distributed ledger and consensus algorithm removing all the threats of intermediaries. Its early applications were related to the finance sector but now this concept has been extended to almost all the major areas of research including education, IoT, banking, supplychain, defense, governance, healthcare, etc. In the field of healthcare, stakeholders (provider, patient, payer, research organizations, and supply chain bearers) demand interoperability, security, authenticity, transparency, and streamlined transactions. Blockchain technology, built over the internet, has the potential to use the current healthcare data into peer to peer and interoperable manner by using a patient-centric approach eliminating the third party. Using this technology, applications can be built to manage and share secure, transparent and immutable audit trails with reduced systematic fraud. This study reviews existing literature in order to identify the major issues of various healthcare stakeholders and to explore the features of blockchain technology that could resolve identified issues. However, there are some challenges and limitations of this technology which are needed to be focused on future research.