Abstract
Blockchain is one of the trendy technologies in the current era. All industries are merging blockchain with their production line to benefit from its features such as security and decentralized data. One of the main problems in the healthcare system is the lack of interoperability (i.e., data should be patient-centered and not institution-centered). Healthcare information systems, in the current state, cannot communicate. Each organization works within its boundaries and owns its data. To make this shift, many challenges should be solved such as data privacy, standards, scalability, and others. Blockchain can solve these problems by giving the patients control over their data; therefore, they can share it with any institution for a time period. It is expected that blockchain will improve healthcare data management. In this chapter, the authors study the opportunity of blockchain to leverage biomedical and healthcare applications and research. Blockchain also contributes to the medication manufacturing area.
TopIntroduction
Various countries are experiencing a rapid increase in the number of patients at hospitals and medical centers, making it hard to handle and manage through the existing infrastructure by available doctors and staff according to Tanwar et al. (2020). In fact, the recent technological breakthroughs bring up major updates and enhancements for healthcare centers to better capture the different challenges imposed with this increase. Healthcare systems are currently being directed with such vision in many aspects. It is expected that in 2030, healthcare systems will integrate different technologies to allow monitoring the health situation of each patient and allow accurate measurement of information that may help save the lives of patients and increase their well-being. Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices are key enablers for this vision, leading to a higher quality of care for patients. Being tailored for individual’s use, doctors are able to monitor each patient through his/her own IoT and wearable device, and thus treating more patients efficiently and accurately without the need to regularly visit clinics and hospitals, except in case of emergency. Patients are thus able to constantly update their doctors with their continuous changes to increase welfare and life-expectancy. This also reduces medical costs and helps in better utilization of resources in available healthcare.
This transformation towards a technological based healthcare system is expected to generate a massive amount of data that is created, stored, and accessed daily. However, this data is subject to multiple challenges imposed due to the nature of communication over the Internet. In fact, data security and privacy in healthcare systems are considered a top concern to be addressed when discussing healthcare data corresponding to patients. In 2018, over 13 million healthcare records were breached (Moro Visconti, 2020). Due to the sensitivity of healthcare data, healthcare data centers may be an attractive place to attackers who aim at financially benefiting from this information through selling it to a third-party provider. This raises the demand for a system that reserves healthcare data of the patients from any fraud. Saha el al. (2020) developed a new scheme that increases security and patients’ data privacy against attackers. This approach showed efficiency in terms of computation cost with respect to other relevant approaches. Further, limitations on the patient's ownership of his/her medical data is a main concern as the patient is in need of a system that allows him/her to control access to this data.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Pharmaceutical Manufacturing: Pharmaceutical production refers to synthesizing pharmaceutical drugs on a large scale in the pharmaceutical industry. The production of drugs can be broken down into a sequence of unit operations.
Clinical Trials: Clinical trials are human clinical experiments that are used to assess the effectiveness of medical, surgical, or behavioral intervention.
Blockchain: Blockchain is a system used for storing data so that it is difficult or impossible to alter, hack, or trick it. A blockchain is a decentralized ledger of transactions distributed through the blockchain's entire network of computer systems.
Interoperability: The ability of various information technology systems and software applications to communicate and share data correctly, efficiently, and reliably
Healthcare System: Is a group of individuals, organizations, and resources that provide health-care services to meet the needs of specific populations.
Internet of Medical Things: Clinical trials are human clinical experiments that are used to assess the effectiveness of medical, surgical, or behavioral intervention.
Biomedical: Biomedical sciences are a group of disciplines that use elements of natural science, structured science, or both to establish information, interventions, and technology for use in healthcare and public health.