‘Fit-for-purpose?’ – challenges and opportunities for applications of blockchain technology in the future of healthcare

TLDR

Blockchain, a distributed ledger technology beyond Bitcoin, is being explored in healthcare to improve data management, provenance, security, and business processes, but its success depends on designing solutions that fit the diverse needs of patients, providers, regulators, and the sector’s unique challenges. The article examines the fit‑for‑purpose concept by presenting multidisciplinary practitioner perspectives on blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment. The authors compile and discuss viewpoints from a multidisciplinary group of blockchain practitioners involved in conceptualization, development, and deployment.

Abstract

Blockchain is a shared distributed digital ledger technology that can better facilitate data management, provenance and security, and has the potential to transform healthcare. Importantly, blockchain represents a data architecture, whose application goes far beyond Bitcoin – the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain and has popularized the technology. In the health sector, blockchain is being aggressively explored by various stakeholders to optimize business processes, lower costs, improve patient outcomes, enhance compliance, and enable better use of healthcare-related data. However, critical in assessing whether blockchain can fulfill the hype of a technology characterized as 'revolutionary' and 'disruptive', is the need to ensure that blockchain design elements consider actual healthcare needs from the diverse perspectives of consumers, patients, providers, and regulators. In addition, answering the real needs of healthcare stakeholders, blockchain approaches must also be responsive to the unique challenges faced in healthcare compared to other sectors of the economy. In this sense, ensuring that a health blockchain is 'fit-for-purpose' is pivotal. This concept forms the basis for this article, where we share views from a multidisciplinary group of practitioners at the forefront of blockchain conceptualization, development, and deployment.