An Overview of Existing Publications and Most Relevant Projects/Platforms on the Use of Blockchain in Medicine and Neurology

Background Blockchain is a new methodology involving a data structure with list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. The aim of the review is to overview the existing publication, projects, and platforms on the use of blockchain in Medicine and Neurology. Methods We searched the bibliographic database of MEDLINE and BASE. We also accessed ICObench, Coinmarketcap, and Mobihealthnews databases to explore upcoming, ongoing, and ended projects. Results In medicine, there are many projects related to health care, disease prevention, and promotion of healthy life style. In neurology, only one project looks promising: Neuro, an ongoing scientific-technical project uniting scientists, engineers, and programmers for development of new architectures and algorithms of neural networks. Bibliographic searches found 117 publications on Medline and 203 publications on BASE referring to the use of blockchain technology in medicine. Most of them are presented as reviews (narrative, systematic, or minireview), opinions and hypotheses, commentaries, or perspectives. As for Neurology, only one publication refers to the use of blockchain, specifically to Parkinson’s disease. Discussion Among the problems related to medicine, there is the lack of information on the patient’s clinical history that could allow accurate diagnosis and treatment. The possibility of having a register based on blockchain technology could help doctors in many ways, including patient management, choosing and monitoring treatments, and standardization of clinical trials. Conclusion The use of the blockchain technology in medicine has been repetitively proposed to solve different problems. In this article, we highlight the possible benefits of this technology, with attention to Neurology. Blockchain use can lead to quantifiable benefits in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, especially in clinical trials that can fail because of an incorrect patient recruitment.

[1]  Morgan P. McBee,et al.  Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications in Medical Imaging , 2020, Journal of Digital Imaging.

[2]  Joaquín B. Ordieres Meré,et al.  Activity-aware essential tremor evaluation using deep learning method based on acceleration data. , 2019, Parkinsonism & related disorders.

[3]  Yixuan Zhu,et al.  Personal Archive Service System using Blockchain Technology: Case Study, Promising and Challenging , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Conference on AI & Mobile Services (AIMS).

[4]  Tiago M. Fernández-Caramés,et al.  Enabling the Internet of Mobile Crowdsourcing Health Things: A Mobile Fog Computing, Blockchain and IoT Based Continuous Glucose Monitoring System for Diabetes Mellitus Research and Care , 2019, Sensors.

[5]  Maria Fazio,et al.  Blockchain-Based Healthcare Workflow for Tele-Medical Laboratory in Federated Hospital IoT Clouds , 2020, Sensors.

[6]  David B. Fogel,et al.  Factors associated with clinical trials that fail and opportunities for improving the likelihood of success: A review , 2018, Contemporary clinical trials communications.

[7]  Min Cheol Chang,et al.  Blockchain Technology: Efficiently Managing Medical Information in the Pain Management Field. , 2019, Pain medicine.

[8]  Patrick Martin,et al.  Using Blockchain Technology to Manage Clinical Trials Data: A Proof-of-Concept Study , 2018, JMIR medical informatics.

[9]  Sooyong Park,et al.  Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review , 2016, PloS one.

[10]  Zibin Zheng,et al.  An Overview of Blockchain Technology: Architecture, Consensus, and Future Trends , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Congress on Big Data (BigData Congress).

[11]  J. Frenk.  The Global Health System: Strengthening National Health Systems as the Next Step for Global Progress , 2010, PLoS medicine.

[12]  Kevin A Clauson,et al.  Geospatial blockchain: promises, challenges, and scenarios in health and healthcare , 2018, International Journal of Health Geographics.

[13]  Meda Raghavendra,et al.  Can Blockchain technologies help tackle the opioid epidemic: A Narrative Review. , 2019, Pain medicine.

[14]  D. Upton,et al.  Improving data transparency in clinical trials using blockchain smart contracts , 2016, F1000Research.

[15]  Anuj Prakash,et al.  Block-Chain: An Evolving Technology , 2017 .

[16]  Philippe Ravaud,et al.  Blockchain technology for improving clinical research quality , 2017, Trials.

[17]  Stuart Haber,et al.  How to time-stamp a digital document , 1990, Journal of Cryptology.

[18]  Johan Bøtker,et al.  Cryptopharmaceuticals: Increasing the Safety of Medication by a Blockchain of Pharmaceutical Products. , 2019, Journal of pharmaceutical sciences.

[19]  Xiangxin Li,et al.  Application of blockchain technology in food safety control：current trends and future prospects , 2020, Critical reviews in food science and nutrition.

[20]  Robert Likić,et al.  Opportunities for Use of Blockchain Technology in Medicine , 2018, Applied Health Economics and Health Policy.

[21]  Karim Keshavjee,et al.  Use of Alternative Currencies, Blockchain Technology, and Predictive Analytics for Chronic Disease Prevention: A Conceptual Model , 2019, MedInfo.

[22]  Tigang Jiang,et al.  Blockchain-Based Internet of Vehicles: Distributed Network Architecture and Performance Analysis , 2019, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[23]  Vinay Trivedi,et al.  The Blockchain , 2019, How to Speak Tech.

[24]  Mark Shervey,et al.  Privacy-Preserving Methods for Feature Engineering Using Blockchain: Review, Evaluation, and Proof of Concept , 2019, Journal of medical Internet research.

[25]  J. Morris.  The Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) , 1993, Neurology.

[26]  Yu Rang Park,et al.  Is Blockchain Technology Suitable for Managing Personal Health Records? Mixed-Methods Study to Test Feasibility , 2019, Journal of medical Internet research.

[27]  Sanchita Bhattacharya,et al.  Prototype of running clinical trials in an untrustworthy environment using blockchain , 2019, Nature Communications.

[28]  Ben Goldacre,et al.  Why clinical trial outcomes fail to translate into benefits for patients , 2017, Trials.

[29]  B. Winblad,et al.  Alzheimer's disease: clinical trials and drug development , 2010, The Lancet Neurology.

[30]  Ioannis Chatzigiannakis,et al.  The role of blockchain and IoT in recruiting participants for digital clinical trials , 2017, 2017 25th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM).

[31]  Hyeon-Eui Kim,et al.  Blockchain distributed ledger technologies for biomedical and health care applications , 2017, J. Am. Medical Informatics Assoc..

[32]  Jonathan Cameron,et al.  Applications of Blockchain Within Healthcare , 2018, Blockchain in Healthcare Today.

[33]  J. Galvin,et al.  Distinguishing Alzheimer’s disease from other major forms of dementia , 2011, Expert review of neurotherapeutics.

[34]  S. Nakamoto,et al.  Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System , 2008 .

[35]  Karl Aberer,et al.  ACTION-EHR: Patient-Centric Blockchain-Based Electronic Health Record Data Management for Cancer Care , 2019, Journal of medical Internet research.