Blockchain Technology in Healthcare Big Data Management: Benefits, Applications and Challenges

Healthcare transformation has become a major priority in a world where extraordinary technological breakthroughs are occurring. Current healthcare data management systems are centralized, posing the possibility of a single point of failure in the event of a natural disaster. Blockchain has rapidly risen to become one of the most talked-about innovations that can tackle many of current data management challenges in the healthcare industry. The use of blockchain technologies for the delivery of safe and secure healthcare data has sparked a lot of interest. Blockchain has the potential to reduce or eliminate many of the most significant challenges of today's healthcare big data management such as patient consents, data ownership, information governance, data auditing, privacy, security, traceability, immutability, flexible access and the reconciliation of conflicting changes from multiple sources. With these potential benefits of blockchain, there are few previously published researches have focused on the role of blockchain in healthcare big data management. In this paper, we aim at enriching the body of literature by exploring the potentials of blockchain for improving healthcare big data management systems. The paper provides an expanded view of the important aspects of the blockchain including the main features, the opportunities of implementation in the management of healthcare big data, as well as the challenges that impedes its acceptance in healthcare context