Toward Patient‐Centric Healthcare Systems: A Systematic Review of Blockchain‐Based Solutions

Abstract

The increasing digitalization of healthcare systems demands secure, transparent, and interoperable data management solutions. Conventional centralized healthcare infrastructures have several significant drawbacks, such as the risk of breaches, poor interoperability between different applications, little or no control for patients over access to their own data, and reliance upon third‐party providers who can be untrustworthy. Due to the decentralized nature of its architecture and its resistance to tampering, blockchain technology offers the potential to create healthcare solutions that address each of these issues by enhancing trust and accountability within the healthcare community. This paper is a systematic review of recent research into blockchain‐based healthcare solutions which includes an examination of recent research development, technological frameworks, and current trends. In addition to classifying existing research according to application domains (such as Electronic Medical Record Management, IoT based Health Monitoring, Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Traceability, Insurance Fraud Detection, Disease Prediction) this paper also examines various aspects of blockchain technologies including platforms, consensus mechanisms, cryptographic techniques, and architectural models, while highlighting their strengths and limitations. Finally, this paper highlights several open challenges including scalability, interoperability, regulatory compliance, and limited real‐world deployments, and presents several possible research directions toward creating patient‐centric healthcare systems.