Blockchain in Healthcare: Insights on COVID-19

TLDR

The SARS‑CoV‑2 pandemic has disrupted global risk management, prompting the use of blockchain—often combined with AI—to strengthen healthcare protocols and develop predictive systems for pandemic containment. The study seeks to validate blockchain in healthcare and propose a trace‑route for COVID‑19‑safe clinical practice. The authors performed a SWOT analysis of a blockchain‑based prediction model for SARS‑CoV‑2 to highlight its opportunities and limitations. The authors conclude that blockchain can strategically enhance COVID‑19‑safe clinical practice and provide key concepts for clinical workflow, as discussed across various models.

Abstract

The SARS-CoV2 pandemic has impacted risk management globally. Blockchain has been increasingly applied to healthcare management, as a strategic tool to strengthen operative protocols and to create the proper basis for an efficient and effective evidence-based decisional process. We aim to validate blockchain in healthcare, and to suggest a trace-route for a COVID19-safe clinical practice. The use of blockchain in combination with artificial intelligence systems allows the creation of a generalizable predictive system that could contribute to the containment of pandemic risk on national territory. A SWOT analysis of the adoption of a blockchain-based prediction model in healthcare and SARS-CoV-2 infection has been carried out to underline opportunities and limits to its adoption. Blockchain could play a strategic role in future digital healthcare: specifically, it may work to improve COVID19-safe clinical practice. The main concepts, and particularly those related to clinical workflow, obtainable from different blockchain-based models have been reported here and critically discussed.