ReviewBlockchain in healthcare today2026
Blockchain Technology to Enhance Clinical Data Management in Healthcare: A Systematic Literature Review.
Review in Blockchain in healthcare today, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Blockchain for Digital Health Governance: Evidence Gap Map and Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Opportunities and Risks of Technology Convergence in Precision Health.Blockchain in healthcare today · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This systematic review examines how blockchain is applied in clinical data management (CDM) and what prevents its adoption in healthcare. A structured search in Scopus and Web of Science retrieved 554 records; after applying inclusion/exclusion criteria and quality assessment, 32 studies published between 2018 and 2024 were included. The analysis was guided by five research questions: (1) how blockchain supports clinical data workflows; (2) its role in data security and privacy; (3) key technical challenges and commonly used technologies; (4) integration with other healthcare technologies, and (5) how does blockchain technology integrate with and enhance other emerging healthcare technologies? Findings show that blockchain can support consent management, secure data sharing, traceability, and tamper-resistant audit trails using smart contracts and decentralized access control. It is also positioned as a trust layer for electronic health records, the Internet of Medical Things, artificial intelligence, and telemedicine by ensuring integrity and controlled access to sensitive clinical data. However, several barriers limit real-world deployment. Reported challenges include limited scalability and throughput, difficulty integrating with legacy electronic health record systems, heterogeneous regulatory requirements, and the complexity of encoding privacy, consent, and compliance into smart contracts. Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric are the most frequently implemented platforms, often combined with off-chain storage and interoperability standards such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)/Substitutable Medical Applications and Reusable Technologies on FHIR. Overall, blockchain shows strong potential to improve security, transparency, and cross-institution exchange in CDM, but its viability depends on addressing scalability, interoperability, and governance constraints. However, the evidence base remains heterogeneous, and only a minority of studies report quantitative benchmarks or real-world deployments, which limits cross-study comparability and generalizability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.