Blockchain Technology for Preventing Disasters in Surgery: A Case Study on Plastic Surgery

The literature is replete with examples of health disasters caused by unacceptable outcomes of elective surgeries (e.g., plastic surgery), such as no benefit from the surgery, wrong surgery operation, mistakes by hospitals/surgeons, and overlooking past health issues/medications. For example, patients are injured or die from malpractice caused by unqualified surgeons or medicine that may be unknown to the patients and families. In many cases, these negative outcomes are covered up due to the lack of transparency in the process of surgery. This chapter discusses the role of blockchain technology in bringing in more transparency in a secure manner to enable the planning and evaluation of surgeries. We illustrate the implementation of a practical blockchain system for an increasingly popular form of elective surgery, plastic surgery. The blockchain system stores surgery data as traceable and immutable records to enhance public trust and accountability of elective surgeries. Besides, the system can serve as a crowd-sourcing information platform.