A Blockchain-Based Regulatory Framework for mHealth

Dounia Marbouh, Mecit Can Emre Simsekler (), Khaled Salah, Raja Jayaraman and Samer Ellahham
Additional contact information
Dounia Marbouh: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
Mecit Can Emre Simsekler: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
Khaled Salah: Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
Raja Jayaraman: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi 127788, United Arab Emirates
Samer Ellahham: Heart and Vascular Institute and Quality and Patient Safety Institute, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi 112412, United Arab Emirates

Data, 2022, vol. 7, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: Mobile health (mHealth) is playing a key role in facilitating health services for patients. Such services may include remote diagnostics and monitoring, chronic conditions management, preventive medicine, and health promotion. While mHealth has gained significant traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, they may pose safety risks to patients. This entails regulations and monitoring of shared data and management of potential safety risks of all mHealth applications continuously and systematically. In this study, we propose a blockchain-based framework for regulating mHealth apps and governing their safe use. We systematically identify the needs, stakeholders, and requirements of the current mHealth practices and regulations that may benefit from blockchain features. Further, we exemplify our framework on a diabetes mHealth app that supports safety risk assessment and incident reporting functions. Blockchain technology can offer a solution to achieve this goal by providing improved security, transparency, accountability, and traceability of data among stakeholders. Blockchain has the potential to alleviate existing mHealth problems related to data centralization, poor data quality, lack of trust, and the absence of robust governance. In the paper, we present a discussion on the security aspects of our proposed blockchain-based framework, including limitations and challenges.

Keywords: mobile health application; mHealth; blockchain; COVID-19; risk management; patient safety; regulation; digital health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/12/177/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2306-5729/7/12/177/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jdataj:v:7:y:2022:i:12:p:177-:d:1000086

Access Statistics for this article

Data is currently edited by Ms. Cecilia Yang

More articles in Data from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().