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      Blockchain Technology in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Review and Directions for Future Research

      , , ,
      Applied Sciences
      MDPI AG

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          Abstract

          One of the most important discoveries and creative developments that is playing a vital role in the professional world today is blockchain technology. Blockchain technology moves in the direction of persistent revolution and change. It is a chain of blocks that covers information and maintains trust between individuals no matter how far they are. In the last couple of years, the upsurge in blockchain technology has obliged scholars and specialists to scrutinize new ways to apply blockchain technology with a wide range of domains. The dramatic increase in blockchain technology has provided many new application opportunities, including healthcare applications. This survey provides a comprehensive review of emerging blockchain-based healthcare technologies and related applications. In this inquiry, we call attention to the open research matters in this fast-growing field, explaining them in some details. We also show the potential of blockchain technology in revolutionizing healthcare industry.

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          Blockchain technology in the energy sector: A systematic review of challenges and opportunities

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            Where Is Current Research on Blockchain Technology?—A Systematic Review

            Blockchain is a decentralized transaction and data management technology developed first for Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The interest in Blockchain technology has been increasing since the idea was coined in 2008. The reason for the interest in Blockchain is its central attributes that provide security, anonymity and data integrity without any third party organization in control of the transactions, and therefore it creates interesting research areas, especially from the perspective of technical challenges and limitations. In this research, we have conducted a systematic mapping study with the goal of collecting all relevant research on Blockchain technology. Our objective is to understand the current research topics, challenges and future directions regarding Blockchain technology from the technical perspective. We have extracted 41 primary papers from scientific databases. The results show that focus in over 80% of the papers is on Bitcoin system and less than 20% deals with other Blockchain applications including e.g. smart contracts and licensing. The majority of research is focusing on revealing and improving limitations of Blockchain from privacy and security perspectives, but many of the proposed solutions lack concrete evaluation on their effectiveness. Many other Blockchain scalability related challenges including throughput and latency have been left unstudied. On the basis of this study, recommendations on future research directions are provided for researchers.
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              Blockchain distributed ledger technologies for biomedical and health care applications

              Abstract Objectives To introduce blockchain technologies, including their benefits, pitfalls, and the latest applications, to the biomedical and health care domains. Target Audience Biomedical and health care informatics researchers who would like to learn about blockchain technologies and their applications in the biomedical/health care domains. Scope The covered topics include: (1) introduction to the famous Bitcoin crypto-currency and the underlying blockchain technology; (2) features of blockchain; (3) review of alternative blockchain technologies; (4) emerging nonfinancial distributed ledger technologies and applications; (5) benefits of blockchain for biomedical/health care applications when compared to traditional distributed databases; (6) overview of the latest biomedical/health care applications of blockchain technologies; and (7) discussion of the potential challenges and proposed solutions of adopting blockchain technologies in biomedical/health care domains.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                ASPCC7
                Applied Sciences
                Applied Sciences
                MDPI AG
                2076-3417
                May 2019
                April 26 2019
                : 9
                : 9
                : 1736
                Article
                10.3390/app9091736
                8a574bbe-8c6a-46b5-a5d5-81912c4fe38f
                © 2019

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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