On the exploitation of the blockchain technology in the healthcare sector: A systematic review

The blockchain is a disruptive technology born in the last few years, which possible applications in different domains are being extensively studied. In this context, healthcare appears to be a very attractive application domain for the blockchain because, due to its characteristics, it can provide the necessary guarantees on the secure processing, sharing and management of sensitive patient data. In this paper, we perform a systematic review of the literature on the adoption of the blockchain technology in healthcare, focusing on applications implemented in real contexts. Our goal is to investigate the current state of the art in this specific field, emphasizing limitations and possible future developments. Publications extracted from Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science that satisfy some predetermined search criteria were collected by means of appropriate queries. These papers were analyzed and classified into five main categories, based on the specific sub-domain on which the applications were projected. The performed analysis highlighted that research activities are currently focused on data security and on the implementation of electronic health records through the Blockchain. On the other hand, some other areas are still under-explored, including that related to IoT or to the implementation of automated diagnosis systems