A Survey on Blockchain Technology Supported Approaches for Healthcare System, Open Issues and Challenges

In the last few years, technological development has multiplied. New technologies are affecting almost every industry. One of these which noticed the abrupt change in their ecosystem is the healthcare industry. As this industry has a direct impact on the human lives so adoption of new technology is not so easy. Proper testing and trials are performed before amalgamating any new technology with the healthcare system. Emerging technologies are being employed to deliver better health-related services to patients. Different communication and information collection technologies are used to maintain and access patients' health data to authorized users. But with the employment of technology, health data security and privacy-related issues are increasing. Maintaining trust among multiple entities of the healthcare system is a challenging task. One emerging technology, distributed ledger technology (DLT), is creating some hope for resolving the fears mentioned above of the healthcare ecosystem. Attributes like Security, privacy and authentication can be enhanced by integrating this technology with the healthcare ecosystem. This study examines the role of distributed ledger technology in the healthcare system while highlighting how some aspects of this disruptive technology can completely alter current business practices. To achieve this, the theoretical foundations of numerous research papers published in prestigious scientific journals and several reports from industries are included in this survey. This helps to streamline our analysis and fully capture the constantly expanding blockchain domain. This survey also identifies several research holes and prospective areas for further study using these findings as a starting point. Both academics and practitioners should find great value in these discoveries. This survey presents a comprehensive evaluation of current DLT- supported approaches in the healthcare system. and provides benefits and limitations of the recent work. This survey also emphasizes the essential security needs for a healthcare ecosystem and discusses the security flaws with existing methods.