Department of Economics, Management and Business Law, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", P.ce Umberto I, 70121 Bari, Italy.
Department of Translational Biomedicine and Neuroscience-DiBraiN, University of Bari "Aldo Moro", P.ce G. Cesare, 70124 Bari, Italy.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2024 Jan 15;21(1):95. doi: 10.3390/ijerph21010095.
The digitisation of healthcare has allowed a significant rethinking of the previous clinical protocols, improving their interoperability through substantial standardisation. These technological advances have ensured that data are comparable, as they are obtained from 'reliable' and certified processes; however, there are billions of data that are neither structured nor quality-controlled. They are collectively referred to as 'Real World Data' (RWD). Blockchain (BC) is a procedure with specific characteristics and algorithms that ensure that the stored data cannot be tampered with. Nowadays, there is an increasing need to rethink blockchain in a one-health vision, making it more than just a 'repository' of data and information, but rather an active player in the process of data sharing. In this landscape, several scholars have analysed the potential benefits of BC in healthcare, focusing on the sharing and safety of clinical data and its contact tracing applications. There is limited research on this matter; moreover, there is a strategic interest in managing RWD in a reliable and comparable way, despite the lack of knowledge on this topic. Our work aims to analyse systematically the most impacting literature, highlighting the main aspects of BC within the context of the new digital healthcare, and speculating on the unexpressed potential of RWD.
医疗保健的数字化使得人们能够对之前的临床方案进行重大的重新思考，通过实质性的标准化提高其互操作性。这些技术进步确保了数据的可比性，因为它们是从“可靠”和经过认证的流程中获得的；然而，有数十亿的数据既没有结构化也没有质量控制。它们统称为“真实世界数据”（RWD）。区块链（BC）是一种具有特定特征和算法的程序，可确保存储的数据不能被篡改。如今，人们越来越需要从一健康的视角重新思考区块链，使其不仅仅是数据和信息的“存储库”，而是数据共享过程中的积极参与者。在这种情况下，几位学者已经分析了区块链在医疗保健中的潜在好处，重点关注临床数据的共享和安全性及其接触者追踪应用。关于这个问题的研究有限；此外，尽管人们对这一主题缺乏了解，但人们还是对以可靠和可比的方式管理 RWD 具有战略兴趣。我们的工作旨在系统地分析最具影响力的文献，突出区块链在新数字医疗保健背景下的主要方面，并推测 RWD 未表达的潜力。
