This paper looks at the opportunities and challenges of implementing blockchain technology across medical sector and provides a clear view which can enable blockchain for more extents. After a notable research on underlying blockchain technology which offers distributed governance, immutable audit trail, provenance of data, robustness and privacy, we contrasted blockchain innovations and identified prominent applications of it in historically decentralized healthcare sector. As healthcare industry faces many challenges like unauthorised data sharing, lack of data transparency, ransomware, data breaches and cyber crimes, blockchain is one of the best way to enhance data sharing and to mitigate prominent cyber crimes. By proper designing of a decentralized and immutable blockchain network where the data is dispersed among credentialed social insurance experts guarantees that cybercriminals cannot touch single patient's confidential data, which facilitates encryption or cryptography of personal data where no patient's emergency data is at extreme hazard. Blockchain trust-worthy cloud is one of the most powerful and secure ways of storing high confidential data. After analysing Blockchain implementations and identifying its potential in healthcare, we conclude with several promising directions for future research.
Authors: Hari Priya Ponnakanti, Murat Ozer, Bilal Gonen