A Concrete Way to Develop Clinical Research in a Fair Way to the Users/Patients Using Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Blockchain is being explored as a potential solution to many problems in areas other than the one created initially: cryptocurrency. Blockchain technology allows the authenticity of data, security in transactions, and privacy without the need for a third party. For that main reason, one of the growing interests concerns its application in healthcare, namely in clinical research. Multiple pain points of clinical research might benefit from the implementation of blockchain technology. This chapter shows some examples in which this technology is already implemented, identifying the advantages of its use. One of those advantages is clinical research, with the possibility of the patients managing their own clinical data and being properly rewarded for that. Research about clinical data monetization for patients is currently limited, and this chapter also proposes a hypothetical scenario of health data monetization workflow.