Blockchain in Healthcare Today

Predictions for 2025: Artificial Intelligence in Modern Drug Development, Quantum Proof Encryption, and Health Data Monetization

2024-11-07T06:49:32-08:00

We are witnessing an unprecedented convergence of scientific discoveries, technology innovations, exponential adoption of technology and remarkable population demographic shifts towards a digitally native society. The Noble Prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics awarded this year further validated the profound impact of technology on healthcare and life sciences. For 2025-designated by the United Nations as The Year of Quantum Technology, we can envision further technology-driven innovations in all domains, triggering the transition to a novel health ecosystem. The role of AI in modern drug development, the demand for quantum-proof encryption, and the opportunities of blockchain in health data monetization are all trends can be disruptive for pharma, healthcare and healthcare finance.

Healthcare Futures: Opportunities, Challenges and Risks in a Blockchain-Driven Environment

2024-12-06T06:07:28-08:00

The integration of blockchain technology and smart contracts presents a transformative opportunity in healthcare financing by enabling the creation and trading of futures contracts based on the value of medical innovations. Traditional financial mechanisms struggle to capture the downstream savings generated by new therapies, particularly as insurers and health systems face the challenge of managing short-term costs while realizing long-term health benefits. Blockchain’s decentralized, transparent, and tamper-proof infrastructure offers a solution by providing reliable data that tracks health outcomes, cost savings, and patient behavior in real-time.

This paper explores how a blockchain-governed healthcare marketplace can facilitate the trading of Health Impact Futures (HIF) contracts that allow stakeholders—such as self-insured health plans, insurers, biotech firms, and speculators—to hedge risks, capture savings, and invest in medical innovations. By leveraging smart contracts, which automate transactions and ensure trust through pre-defined algorithms, the platform offers a seamless and secure environment for managing complex healthcare data and financial instruments. The introduction of health cost indices, anchored in reliable blockchain-verified data, allows for accurate pricing and risk management, promoting liquidity and market efficiency.

Additionally, tokenization of health savings enables insurers to capture the economic value of improved health outcomes, even when patients switch health plans. This approach not only ensures the continuity of value but also introduces a new financial layer that reflects the real-world impact of medical innovations. By using structured notes and algorithm-driven health indices, market participants can dynamically hedge against fluctuations in healthcare costs while aligning incentives across the healthcare value chain. The paper concludes by addressing the technological, regulatory, and data integrity challenges associated with developing a blockchain-based futures market for healthcare and proposes a roadmap for overcoming these barriers to unlock the full potential of this innovation.

A Secure and Reliable Fog-Enabled Architecture Using Blockchain With Functional Biased Elliptic Curve Cryptography Algorithm for Healthcare Services

2024-09-09T13:33:58-07:00

Fog computing is an emerging technology that extends the capability and efficiency of cloud computing networks by acting as a bridge among the cloud and the device. Fog devices can process an enormous volume of information locally, are transportable, and can be deployed on a variety of systems. Because of its real-time processing and event reactions, it is ideal for healthcare. With such a wide range of characteristics, new security and privacy concerns arise. Due to the safe transmission, arrival, and access, as well as the availability of medical devices, security creates new issues in the area of healthcare. As an outcome, fog computing necessitates a unique approach to security and privacy metrics, as opposed to standard cloud computing methods. Hence, this paper suggests an effective blockchain depending on secure healthcare services in fog computing. Here the fog nodes gather the information from the medical sensor devices and the data is validated using smart contracts in the blockchain network. We propose a Functional Biased Elliptic Curve Cryptography Algorithm (FB-ECC) to encrypt the data. The optimization is performed using Galactic Bee Colony Optimization Algorithm (GBCOA) to enhance the procedure of encryption. The performance of the suggested methodology is assessed and contrasted with the traditional techniques. It is proved that the combination of fog computing with blockchain has increased the security of data transmission in healthcare services

Tracing the Blockchain Challenges in Healthcare: A Topic Modeling and Bibliometric Analysis

2024-08-19T14:31:55-07:00

The application of blockchain technology to healthcare offers promise in providing solutions to some key challenges related to data sharing, privacy, security, and access control. There are however several barriers preventing blockchain adoption from spreading widely, which has prompted research efforts. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of 196 documents, indexed in the Scopus database, to examine the structure, impact, contributors, and journals. Also, topic modeling is applied to give new knowledge on the latent topical structure of this literature. As a result, five critical challenges have been identified regarding the use of blockchain in healthcare including data privacy/security, scalability, governance, interoperability and standards, and cost.

Do They Know It’s Christmas?

2024-11-19T11:57:27-08:00

Use Case

OikosNomos.world (ONW), aims to build water taps in the desert, turning sea water into drinking water, by using solar energy to pump sweet water from boreholes, or by converting night time dew to drink.

The technology is there. The largest version of a desalination machine, for example, is a 20-foot container with filters (membranes) for reverse osmosis, and solar panels to power it. The machine costs $200,000 to purchase and install. It produces 100,000 liters of clean water per day, using nothing but free and plentiful seawater and sunshine. The water will be sold commercially to parties such as brewers and beverage companies at a premium price, to make SeaBeer, SeaDrink, or SeaJuice. Water will be given away for free to poor populations in the direct vicinity of the tap.

They will use their mobile phones to open the tap. It will then release two to five liters of water. This can be repeated as often as required and prevents misuse.

Any water produced but not sold will go into fishponds, to be run by the local community. In return, they will provide physical security, e.g. against theft or vandalism, and do simple maintenance worksuch as cleaning the pipes and filters. The ponds themselves are simple, mere holes in the ground of approximately one cubic meter, lined with plastic sheets, and home to 10-15 fish (e.g. catfish, or tilapia).

We want to finance this! Not through donations or one-off kindness, but via sustainable financial instruments such as an interest-bearing bond, the DeFi Hunger & Poverty Water Bond.

Challenge

The challenge is to write an article of maximum 2,000 words that describes a solution to address the use case outline. The best three articles (technical report, methodology, etc), will be submitted to the Blockchain in Healthcare Today Platform Approaches Journal for editorial review and publication at no cost.

Final submission date is March 1, 2025. Upload your submission here.

Ethics of Blockchain by Design: Guiding a Responsible Future for Healthcare Innovation

2024-11-26T08:59:43-08:00

The rapid evolution of blockchain technology within healthcare presents unparalleled opportunities for advancements, including enhanced patient data security, decentralized systems for trustless operations, and transparent supply chain management. However, as blockchain reshapes the healthcare landscape, it demands a robust ethical framework that guides its design and implementation. "Ethics of Blockchain by Design" emphasizes embedding ethical principles at the heart of blockchain innovation, fostering public trust, equity, and long-term societal benefits. This paper also proposes a set of best practices guidelines on ethics of blockchain by design.

Systematic Review of Usability Factors, Models, and Frameworks with Blockchain Integration for Secure Mobile Health (mHealth) Applications

2024-11-26T17:52:20-08:00

This systematic review examines critical usability factors that influence the adoption of mobile health (mHealth) applications among older adults and identifies gaps in current usability models, including ISO 9241-11, Nielsen’s heuristics, and PACMAD. This review also explores the potential role of blockchain technology in enhancing multimodal medical data systems within mHealth applications. A comprehensive search across six databases yielded 1,073 studies, with 60 meeting inclusion criteria. Studies were analyzed through thematic synthesis to identify key success factors (RQ1) and comparative analysis to assess limitations in existing frameworks (RQ2). Key factors promoting mHealth adoption included ease of use, efficiency, error prevention, learnability, memorability, and user satisfaction. Blockchain integration emerged as a promising approach to improve data security, interoperability, and user trust, particularly for older adults who engage with complex, multimodal health data. Findings from RQ2 highlighted gaps in usability models, such as the lack of age-specific guidance for multimodal interaction, error recovery, and data privacy. These results underscore the need to define a new usability framework and incorporate blockchain to meet the unique needs of older adults in mHealth applications, supporting both secure and accessible healthcare management.

Leveraging Blockchain and AI for Pharma Supply Chain Efficiency

2024-11-19T07:51:03-08:00

The presentation discusses the potential of blockchain and AI to revolutionize the pharmaceutical supply chain. The author, with a rich history in healthcare technology, highlights the inefficiencies and challenges faced by the industry, particularly in areas like drug discovery, manufacturing, and distribution.

Blockchain technology, with its ability to create immutable records, can enhance transparency, traceability, and security across the supply chain. This can help in tracking the journey of drugs from raw materials to the final product, reducing the risk of counterfeiting and ensuring quality.

AI, on the other hand, can optimize various processes, such as drug discovery, clinical trials, and supply chain logistics. By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can identify patterns, predict trends, and make informed decisions. This can accelerate drug development, improve manufacturing efficiency, and optimize inventory management.

The integration of blockchain and AI can create a powerful synergy, leading to significant improvements in the pharmaceutical supply chain. This includes enhanced patient safety, reduced costs, and faster time-to-market for new drugs. The presentation provides a concise view of the health care supply chain processes and discusses AI patterns such as RAG, GAM and Fine-Tuning methods such as LoRA and QLoRa that can help in building trust in the supply chain.