Title: Blockchain-enabled healthcare data management: a potential for COVID-19 outbreak to reinforce deployment

Authors: Mohsen Attaran

Addresses: School of Business and Public Administration, California State University, Bakersfield, 9001 Stockdale Highway, Bakersfield, California 93311-1099, USA

Abstract: Healthcare practitioners are faced with the challenge of accessing, managing, integrating, and sharing health records securely. 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. Coronavirus outbreak highlights the need for more health data transparency and a better healthcare data management system that can be used in predicting, preventing, and controlling emerging infectious diseases. Blockchain technology helps solve some of the healthcare data management challenges and help healthcare providers automate medical record mining to aid in data sharing and making more accurate diagnoses. This paper identifies challenges, opportunities, benefits, and drawbacks of the use of blockchain in healthcare data management. The paper also highlights the role COVID-19 plays in accelerating the adoption of blockchain-enabled healthcare data management by governments and businesses.

Keywords: blockchain; peer-to-peer network; compliance tracking; healthcare data; cyber security; electronic health records; EHRs; interoperability; coronavirus; COVID-19.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2023.132068

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2023 Vol.43 No.3, pp.348 - 368

Received: 31 Mar 2020
Accepted: 27 Jul 2020
Published online: 11 Jul 2023 *

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