Clinical Impact of “Real World Data” and Blockchain on Public Health: A Scoping Review

Virginia Milone, Antonio Fusco (), Angelamaria De Feo and Marco Tatullo ()
Additional contact information
Virginia Milone: Department of Economics, Management and Business Law, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, P.ce Umberto I, 70121 Bari, Italy
Antonio Fusco: Department of Economics, Management and Business Law, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, P.ce Umberto I, 70121 Bari, Italy
Angelamaria De Feo: Department of Economics, Management and Business Law, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, P.ce Umberto I, 70121 Bari, Italy
Marco Tatullo: Department of Translational Biomedicine and Neuroscience—DiBraiN, University of Bari “Aldo Moro”, P.ce G. Cesare, 70124 Bari, Italy

IJERPH, 2024, vol. 21, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: healthcare; real-world data; big data; healthcare policies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/95/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/21/1/95/ (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:jijerp:v:21:y:2024:i:1:p:95-:d:1319666

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

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