Medical Education on the Blockchain

Abstract

The traditional Medical Education ecosystems are largely centralised and confined to the boundaries of academic institutions. Rather than promoting efficiency and global forward thinking, a number of medical institutions have become inwardly focused, confining themselves to their own institutional rules and frameworks. In the past two years, the utility of blockchain in the higher education setting has been extensively studied. A blockchain is essentially a distributed, immutable, trustworthy, decentralised database that keeps an irreversible, time-stamped record of transfer of value between users for every operation that has ever been carried out on its network. This has traditionally been used in cryptocurrency transactions, however, with the rise of blockchain based Decentralised Applications (DApps), the potential benefits of this ground-breaking technology in higher education are now being explored. Although still in the early developmental stages, blockchain holds promising potential for use in medical education. Some of these are budding hypothesis while in other areas, we have witnessed real, tangible progress. This article analyses the potential use cases for blockchain deployment in medical education ecosystems, to improve the efficiency, security, functionality and effectiveness of existing infrastructures. We conclude the essay by proposing how blockchain can eliminate the growing problem of fraudulent academic accreditations