Home // eTELEMED 2020, The Twelfth International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine // View article
Authors:
Christos Kontzinos
Panagiotis Kapsalis
Spiros Mouzakitis
Michael Kontoulis
Ourania Markaki
Dimitris Askounis
Haralampos Karanikas
Alexandros Christodoulakis
Panagiotis Dimitrakopoulos
Keywords: blockchain; healthcare; GDPR; sensitive data; patient rights
Abstract:
Blockchain is an emerging technology that offers decentralised data management capabilities in a distributed ledger. While the initial and main domain of application has been and continues to be that of cryptocurrencies and their use in secure, digital economic transactions, blockchain’s inherent properties for security, immutability and transparency make it an excellent solution for various domains that deal with personal or even sensitive data such as the domain of healthcare. At the same time, the radical increase of digitisation in healthcare, as well as automation of processes, robotics, and the rise of medical sensors and devices also led to an unprecedented rise in medical data availability. This fact has brought forth citizen and societal concerns regarding the safety of their medical data and the transparency of data transactions that they engage in, especially given that medical data are sensitive. To address these and other concerns, in the European Union, the European Commission established in 2016 that General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to establish user rights concerning their data as well as set out the obligations of an organisation that is responsible for storing, managing and processing said data. Some of the articles of the GDPR, while integral to safeguard a user’s rights, are opposite to the technical capabilities of innovative technologies, blockchain being one of them. The scope of this publication is to present blockchain, describe its potential in the healthcare domain, list limitations between blockchain and the GDPR, and finally provide guidelines to reconcile the two, acting as a roadmap for researchers and organisations who are developing blockchain applications in healthcare and other domains.
Pages: 166 to 171
Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2020
Publication date: March 22, 2020
Published in: conference
ISSN: 2308-4359
ISBN: 978-1-61208-763-4
Location: Valencia, Spain
Dates: from November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020