A Narrative Review of Blockchain in Healthcare: Applications and challenges

Healthcare as an industry has unique requirements such as patient security and privacy, interoperability, sharing, transmission, and access control of patient data. On the other hand, the advantages of blockchain technology and the compliance of these advantages with the requirements of the health industry have encouraged researchers to investigate the methods of applying blockchain in healthcare. The rapid increase in blockchain and health research has created many applications. Despite the high potential of this technology for health applications, there are still challenges to be reviewed. In this article, we provide a narrative overview of blockchain applications and challenges in the healthcare industry.

In this narrative review, published studies until October 2022 that were accessible in PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were searched; from 254 related studies, 171 were identified by their titles, and finally, after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 30 articles were selected to be reviewed.

The results showed that 10 applications of blockchain technology in healthcare are as follows: safe sharing of health data, establishing electronic medical records, medical record tracking, opioid prescription tracking, deep learning, drug supply chain, clinical trials, COVID-19 pandemic management, and remote patient monitoring. The application of blockchain technology in healthcare also has challenges such as interoperability, security and privacy, immutability, scalability, patient engagement, transparency, and confidentiality.

The compatibility between the requirements of the health industry and the characteristics of the blockchain has created a suitable platform for the use of this technology in the health industry. However, there are challenges in the path of these applications that must be solved.