Biomedical blockchain with practical implementations and quantitative evaluations: a systematic review.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
; 31(6): 1423-1435, 2024 May 20.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38726710
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Blockchain has emerged as a potential data-sharing structure in healthcare because of its decentralization, immutability, and traceability. However, its use in the biomedical domain is yet to be investigated comprehensively, especially from the aspects of implementation and evaluation, by existing blockchain literature reviews. To address this, our review assesses blockchain applications implemented in practice and evaluated with quantitative metrics. MATERIALS ANDMETHODS:
This systematic review adapts the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework to review biomedical blockchain papers published by August 2023 from 3 databases. Blockchain application, implementation, and evaluation metrics were collected and summarized.RESULTS:
Following screening, 11 articles were included in this review. Articles spanned a range of biomedical applications including COVID-19 medical data sharing, decentralized internet of things (IoT) data storage, clinical trial management, biomedical certificate storage, electronic health record (EHR) data sharing, and distributed predictive model generation. Only one article demonstrated blockchain deployment at a medical facility.DISCUSSION:
Ethereum was the most common blockchain platform. All but one implementation was developed with private network permissions. Also, 8 articles contained storage speed metrics and 6 contained query speed metrics. However, inconsistencies in presented metrics and the small number of articles included limit technological comparisons with each other.CONCLUSION:
While blockchain demonstrates feasibility for adoption in healthcare, it is not as popular as currently existing technologies for biomedical data management. Addressing implementation and evaluation factors will better showcase blockchain's practical benefits, enabling blockchain to have a significant impact on the health sector.Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Blockchain
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2024
Tipo de documento:
Article