Current Cybersecurity Challenges of Applying Blockchain in Healthcare

The most significant problems faced in electronic healthcare are data protection, sharing, and interoperability. These problems may be reliable by using Blockchain. With blockchain, transparency and trust can be established in transactional systems by using a peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed ledger technology. This technology enhances security, data exchange, interoperability, integrity, and real-time updating and access when correctly implemented. Blockchain regulates accessibility to the database, and transfers of rights among individuals based on certain situations and it facilitates access to the information of user profiles, the user will have full access to his information and control how his data will be shared. A blockchain would also securely store access control policies, and only the users could change them. This creates an environment of transparency and allows the user to make all decisions as to what data is collected and how the data is shared. However, the most difficult challenges for blockchain healthcare are the data backup and compliance with regulation. There are national and international privacy laws such as HIPAA, EU's General Data Protection Regulation, and the GDPR-like California Consumer Privacy Act. Decentralization in blockchain makes it impossible to have a full data backup.