Blockchain Approaches for Healthcare: A Review and Outlook

Nowadays, the application of information technology worldwide is accelerating the digital transformation of the healthcare sector. Incorporating blockchain technology into healthcare provides better and more innovative solutions for healthcare providers to enhance the patient's care. By establishing a shared ledger that is cooperatively maintained and impenetrable to tampering, blockchain (BC) technology offers a novel approach to record historical data and ensure the reliability and security of data stored in distributed networks. Nevertheless, new issues relating to privacy and security arise with the integration of the blockchain into the healthcare industry. Hence, this research review concentrates on offering a thorough literature assessment of the chosen papers to emphasize the research subjects that are currently being investigated in blockchain-based healthcare systems and highlight their limitations and potential directions for strengthening the digital security of healthcare data. By analyzing current trends and implications, this research aims to provide a concise overview of existing approaches, and how BC is being utilized to enhance data security, interpretability, and transparency in the healthcare system. The research analyzes 25 literature papers on BC technology for the healthcare domain. Further, the evaluation based on the metrics utilized and year-wise analysis of the selected publications is carried out in this research. Finally, the research also provides an overview of blockchain-related healthcare mechanisms that provide solutions for various applications.