Blockchain Technology in Health-Care Sector: A Review

Distributed ledgers, decentralized storage, centralized identity and authentication, and immutable records are just some of the features baked into blockchain technology. It’s moved beyond the hype stage and into practical applications in fields like health care. Public blockchains in the health-care business often need stronger criteria for identification, interoperability, and information sharing than other industries due to regulations such as the repeal of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. (HIPAA). Academic and industry researchers have started exploring health-care-related applications that build on existing blockchain technology. Some examples of this include smart contracts and the authentication of identities to avoid fraud. Despite these improvements, concerns remain due to the fact the blockchain presents a unique set of flaws and difficulties that need to be tackled, such as mine incentive, extracting attacks, and key managing. This assessment found, however, that many of the requirements of smart health care were not being met by some of the blockchain initiatives under study. Possible future research directions are also discussed in this study.