Patients and healthcare providers face significant challenges in accessing, managing, integrating, and securely sharing health records. Ideally, patients should be able to manage their medical records globally, track their medical history, grant data access, and securely share this information with healthcare professionals. Direct patient access to health data, coupled with a stronger data-sharing infrastructure, could enhance the healthcare system’s ability to respond to public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 outbreak. However, current healthcare technologies fall short in meeting these needs due to limitations in privacy, security, and comprehensive system interoperability. This paper reviews existing literature to explore how blockchain technology can address some of the critical challenges facing the healthcare industry. It identifies both the challenges and opportunities of implementing blockchain in healthcare and provides an overview of health-related blockchain solutions and key players across various applications. Our research builds upon and expands current studies on blockchain in healthcare.

Blockchain; Peer-to-Peer Network; Compliance Tracking; Healthcare Data; Cybersecurity; HIPAA Compliance; On-Chain Data Management