论文题目：Geospatial blockchain: promises, challenges, and scenarios in health and healthcare

期刊：International Journal of Health Geographics

作者：Maged N. Kamel Boulos et al.

发表时间：2018/7/5

数字识别码：10.1186/s12942-018-0144-x

原文链接：https://ij-healthgeographics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12942-018-0144-x?utm_source=Other_website&utm_medium=Website_links&utm_content=DaiDen-BMC-International_Journal_of_Health_Geographics-Multidisciplinary-China&utm_campaign=AJH_USG_BSCN_DD_IJHealthGeo

大家熟悉的区块链是支持虚拟货币——比特币的一项技术。 但区块链的潜力远不止于此，医疗保健行业可能因此发生革命性的改变。 在International Journal of Health Geographies近日发表的社论中，Maged N. Kamel Boulos和同事讨论了如何使用区块链技术获取患者和医疗卫生人员的身份信息、管理医疗供应链、实现公共和开放的地理标记数据共享等。

图片来源：Wikimedia commons

过去几年，人们对在健康和医疗保健研究和实践中使用区块链技术越来越感兴趣。 区块链是支持虚拟货币——比特币的核心分布式账本技术。 然而，我们研究人员对区块链的兴趣远远超出了虚拟货币领域。

2018年3月，包括Springer Nature在内的学术出版商联盟推出了1期同行评审区块链“以使同行评审过程更加透明，更加可识别，也更加让人信服。”早些时候，2017年，美国疾病预防控制中心 （CDC）开始尝试使用区块链共享公共卫生数据，以帮助公共卫生工作者更快地应对公共卫生危机。

在撰写本文时（2018年6月20日），使用“区块链”在PubMed进行检索时共可查到41篇相关论文。 目前世界多个国家地区都在探索如何在医疗卫生领域使用区块链技术，应用领域包括确认患者和医疗卫生工作人员的身份信息、管理药物和医疗设备供应链、检测医疗欺诈、实现研究人员之间的医疗数据共享、实现研究数据货币化以及使用区块链依赖的增强现实进行公共卫生危机映射和应对。

物联网（IoT）是当今和未来智能健康城市和地区的基础。 不同的物联网设备和应用程序相互联通、支付，提供安全的运营与服务。物联网设备和应用程序市场在可预见的未来将出现持续增长。

一些常见的物联网设备包括用于支付公共交通费用的移动可穿戴设备，以及用于智能城市紧急/灾难响应的自主连接设备和车辆，例如自动除颤器、可用于交付订购药品和医疗用品的无人机/车、自动驾驶救护车（直升机）等。

以区块链为中心的分布式对等应用程序为这些智能设备，无人机和车辆提供技术支持，取代了“中间人”的角色，也在极大程度上减少了对提供导航及地理数据的第三方的依赖，并将降低物联网支持的自动驾驶汽车被劫持驾驶到非指定地点的可能性。

当今区块链技术面临互用性、安全性、隐私性、找寻合适且可持续的商业模式等诸多挑战。 然而这些挑战并非不可克服，我期待区块链技术变得越来越强大和强大，尤其是当它们和人工智能（AI）结合，为医疗卫生领域依托区块链的AI介导的数据交换提供适合真实世界的解决方案。

尽管比特币是一个有争议的话题，有些人认为它是一个错误的经济概念，但它给了我们带来了区块链，其基础是分散化，加密安全性和不变性。真正让人印象深刻的是看着这些概念如何逐步与比特币分离并以多种方式运用到其他更具意义的领域。

摘要：

A PubMed query run in June 2018 using the keyword ‘blockchain’ retrieved 40 indexed papers, a reflection of the growing interest in blockchain among the medical and healthcare research and practice communities. Blockchain’s foundations of decentralisation, cryptographic security and immutability make it a strong contender in reshaping the healthcare landscape worldwide. Blockchain solutions are currently being explored for: (1) securing patient and provider identities; (2) managing pharmaceutical and medical device supply chains; (3) clinical research and data monetisation; (4) medical fraud detection; (5) public health surveillance; (6) enabling truly public and open geo-tagged data; (7) powering many Internet of Things-connected autonomous devices, wearables, drones and vehicles, via the distributed peer-to-peer apps they run, to deliver the full vision of smart healthy cities and regions; and (8) blockchain-enabled augmented reality in crisis mapping and recovery scenarios, including mechanisms for validating, crediting and rewarding crowdsourced geo-tagged data, among other emerging use cases. Geospatially-enabled blockchain solutions exist today that use a crypto-spatial coordinate system to add an immutable spatial context that regular blockchains lack. These geospatial blockchains do not just record an entry’s specific time, but also require and validate its associated proof of location, allowing accurate spatiotemporal mapping of physical world events. Blockchain and distributed ledger technology face similar challenges as any other technology threatening to disintermediate legacy processes and commercial interests, namely the challenges of blockchain interoperability, security and privacy, as well as the need to find suitable and sustainable business models of implementation. Nevertheless, we expect blockchain technologies to get increasingly powerful and robust, as they become coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) in various real-word healthcare solutions involving AI-mediated data exchange on blockchains.

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期刊介绍：International Journal of Health Geographics is an interdisciplinary, open access journal publishing internationally significant studies of geospatial information systems and science applications in health and healthcare. With an exceptional author satisfaction rate and a quick time to first decision, the journal caters to readers across an array of healthcare disciplines globally.

2016 Journal Metrics

Citation Impact

3.282 - 2-year Impact Factor

3.199 - 5-year Impact Factor

1.274 - Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)

（来源：科学网）