Review
A Review on the Role of Blockchain Technology
in the Healthcare Domain
Haider Dhia Zubaydi
1
, Yung-Wey Chong
1,
* , Kwangman Ko
2
, Sabri M. Hanshi
1
and
Shankar Karuppayah
1
1
National Advanced IPv6 Centre, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Gelugor 11800, Penang, Malaysia;
haidardhia@yahoo.com (H.D.Z.); Smhanshi@ieee.org (S.M.H.); kshankar@usm.my (S.K.)
2
School of Computer and Information Engineering, Sangji University, Gangwon 220-702, Korea;
kkman@sangji.ac.kr
* Correspondence: chong@usm.my
Received: 31 March 2019; Accepted: 12 May 2019; Published: 15 June 2019
Abstract:
Recently, there have been increasing calls for healthcare providers to provide controls for
patients over their personal health records. Nevertheless, security issues concerning how different
healthcare providers exchange healthcare information have caused a flop in the deployment of
such systems. The ability to exchange data securely is important so that new borderless integrated
healthcare services can be provided to patients. Due to its decentralized nature, blockchain technology
is a suitable driver for the much-needed shift towards integrated healthcare, providing new insights
and addressing some of the main challenges of many healthcare areas. Blockchain allows healthcare
providers to record and manage peer-to-peer transactions through a network without central authority.
In this paper, we discuss the concept of blockchain technology and hurdles in their adoption in the
healthcare domain. Furthermore, a review is conducted on the latest implementations of blockchain
technology in healthcare. Finally, a new case study of a blockchain-based healthcare platform is
presented addressing the drawbacks of current designs, followed by recommendations for future
blockchain researchers and developers.
Keywords:
blockchain; blockchain-based platform; DApp; decentralized application; healthcare;
Internet of Things; IoT
1. Introduction
Blockchain is a digital-ledger-based technology developed to change the perspective of the
digital transactions, or specifically, to replace them. Blockchain is defined as a distinct, decentralized
distributed ledger that includes all transactions records related to participating members. Blockchain
transactions are created and stored in chronological order [
1
], allowing digital assets (such as digital
currency and digital data) to be tracked by participants without central record-keeping [
2
,
3
]. One of
the key features in blockchain is that participating nodes in the network will hold a copy of the full
blockchain [
4
]. All transactions on the blockchain must be approved because transactions are only
valid under the consensus agreement of the participating members. In addition, all transactions are
trackable [
5
], making fraudulent transactions impossible to bypass [
6
]. When a user (user A) wants to
make a transaction to another user (user B) using blockchain, a new block is created to include the
transaction. Each transaction is broadcasted across network nodes to verify it. If the new transaction
is verified, the new block is added to the blockchain and distributed across network nodes so that
other nodes will update their blockchain. Finally, the transaction is received by another user (user B).
The full process is depicted in Figure 1.
Electronics 2019, 8, 679; doi:10.3390/electronics8060679 www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
