Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 7, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Oct 9, 2018 - Oct 17, 2018
Date Accepted: Dec 29, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Implementing Blockchains for Efficient Healthcare: A Systematic Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
The scattered nature of sensitive health information can bring about situations where timely information is unavailable, worsening health outcomes. Furthermore, as patient involvement in healthcare increases, there is a growing need for patients to access and control their data. Blockchain is a secure decentralised online ledger that could be used to manage electronic health records efficiently, and so improve health outcomes by enabling interoperability.
Objective:
To perform a systematic review to assess the feasibility of blockchain as a method of managing healthcare records efficiently.
Methods:
Reviewers identified studies via systematic searches of databases including Pubmed, Medline, Scopus, Embase, Proquest and Cochrane Library. Suitability for inclusion of each was assessed independently.
Results:
Of 71 included studies, the majority discuss potential benefits and limitations without evaluation of their effectiveness, although some systems were tested on live data.
Conclusions:
Blockchain can efficiently manage access to electronic health records stored on the cloud. Using a blockchain can increase interoperability without compromising privacy and security of data. It contains inherent integrity, and conforms to strict legal regulations. Increased interoperability would be beneficial for health outcomes. While this technology is currently unfamiliar to most, investments into creating a sufficiently user-friendly interface and educating users on how best to take advantage of it would also improve health outcomes. Clinical Trial: International Prospective Register for Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) number CRD42018096947.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.