Blockchain technology in healthcare: Challenges and opportunities
Abstract
Patients and healthcare practitioners are faced with the challenge of accessing, managing, integrating, and sharing health records securely. Patients should be able to manage their health records anywhere in the world, keep track of medical background, give access to data, and share those with any healthcare professional securely. Direct access to data for patients and a more robust data-sharing infrastructure could better prepare the healthcare system to manage public health threats during the emergence of deadly disease outbreak such as COVID-19. Current technologies in use by the healthcare industry do not adequately address these requirements due to limitations related to privacy, security, and full ecosystem interoperability. This paper conducted a literature review to find out the pivotal roles blockchain technology play in solving some of the most critical and challenging issues facing the healthcare industry. This paper identifies challenges and opportunities for implementing blockchain technology in healthcare and summarizes health-related blockchain products and key players offering solutions across different applications. In doing this, our research extends and complements existing blockchain research in healthcare.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Blockchain technology provides the solution to address these challenges and enable small and large healthcare providers to transact with suppliers and distribution partners easily while benefiting from cost savings.
“Thus, blockchain technology provides the solution to address these challenges and enable small and large healthcare providers to transact with suppliers and distribution partners easily while bene ting from cost savings [10], [11].”
From Automating Procurement Contracts in the Healthcare Supply Chain Using Blockchain Smart Contracts (2021) · cites this paper as [11]
A significant amount of effort and time is currently spent on negotiating pricing errors, rebates, and GPO administrative fee payments because the contract changes very often during the life of a GPO contract making the process highly inefficient.
“Asigni cant amount of effort and time is currently spent on negotiating pricing errors, rebates, and GPO administrative fee payments because the contract changes very often during the life of a GPO contract making the process highly inef cient [3].”
From Automating Procurement Contracts in the Healthcare Supply Chain Using Blockchain Smart Contracts (2021) · cites this paper as [3]
Cites
Blockchain technology in healthcare: a systematic review
Agbo, C. C., Mahmoud, Q. H., & Eklund, J. M. (2019) · Healthcare · doi:10.3390/healthcare7020056 · Cited by 1,131 · see citing works
Blockchain Technology for Healthcare: Facilitating the Transition to Patient-Driven Interoperability
Gordon, W. J., & Catalini, C. (2018) · Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal · doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2018.06.003 · Cited by 828 · see citing works
Blockchains everywhere - a use-case of blockchains in the pharma supply-chain
Bocek, T., Rodrigues, B. B., Strasser, T., & Stiller, B. (2017) · 2017 IFIP/IEEE Symposium on Integrated Network and Service Management (IM) · doi:10.23919/inm.2017.7987376 · Cited by 585 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Blockchain is seen as improving the ability to identify the origin and authenticity of medical products, which improves supply chain security [43 – 45].”
BackgroundBlockchain Technology: Applications in Health Care
Angraal, S., Krumholz, H. M., & Schulz, W. L. (2017) · Circulation Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes · doi:10.1161/circoutcomes.117.003800 · Cited by 430 · see citing works
Blockchain-based data preservation system for medical data
Li, H., Zhu, L., Shen, M., Gao, F., Tao, X., & Liu, S. (2018) · Journal of Medical Systems · doi:10.1007/s10916-018-0997-3 · Cited by 347 · see citing works
Tamper-Resistant Mobile Health Using Blockchain Technology.
Ichikawa, D., Kashiyama, M., & Ueno, T. (2017) · JMIR mHealth and uHealth · doi:10.2196/mhealth.7938 · Cited by 298 · cited 3× · see citing works
“The technology has issues with handling multi-dimensional data, such as complex text, images, and graphs [60].”
BackgroundMethodMIStore: a Blockchain-Based Medical Insurance Storage System
Zhou, L., Wang, L., & Sun, Y. (2018) · Journal of Medical Systems · doi:10.1007/s10916-018-0996-4 · Cited by 217 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Automating Procurement Contracts in the Healthcare Supply Chain Using Blockchain Smart Contracts
Omar, I. A., Jayaraman, R., Debe, M. S., Salah, K., Yaqoob, I., & Omar, M. (2021) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2021.3062471 · Cited by 259 · see citing works
“Thus, blockchain technology provides the solution to address these challenges and enable small and large healthcare providers to transact with suppliers and distribution partners easily while benefiting from cost savings [10], [11].”
BackgroundArdic, N., & Dinc, R. (2025) · Health Informatics Journal · doi:10.1177/14604582251366141 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Hyperledger fabric platform for healthcare trust relations—Proof-of-Concept
Nedaković, A., Hasselgren, A., Kralevska, K., & Gligoroski, D. (2023) · Blockchain: Research and Applications · doi:10.1016/j.bcra.2023.100156 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
- Authors
- Attaran, M.
- Affiliations
- California State University, Bakersfield (US)
- Corresponding author
- Attaran, Mohsen
- ORCID
- Attaran, Mohsen
- Venue
- International Journal of Healthcare Management
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2020-11-08
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 70-83
- ISSN
- 2047-9700 (ISSN-L)
- 2047-9719
- OpenAlex
- W3103740122
- Cited by
- 468
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 59 · 2025: 132 · 2024: 125 · 2023: 97 · 2022: 45 · 2021: 10
- FWCI
- 35.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Healthcare Management (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology Applications and Security
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Blockchain Technology in Education and Learning
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Electronic Health Records Systems
- Keywords
- blockchain, health care, electronic health records, health data sharing, data privacy, data security, interoperability, patient data access, COVID-19 pandemic, health data ecosystem
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
