Mapping research trends of blockchain technology in healthcare

Abstract

Disruptive technology, blockchain is propelling a technological intervention in healthcare due to its unique features and advantages. The healthcare industry is migrating to Health 4.0. Therefore, peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions in a decentralized and distributed manner makes blockchain more lucrative to serve the needs of the healthcare industry of today. The revolutionary system, blockchain has been discussed in the field of healthcare over the past five years. Hence, a systematic investigation of the existing body of knowledge concerning blockchain research in healthcare is essential. The motivation of this study is to support further studies based on the current research trend analysis via graphical visualization and bibliographic material analysis. Therefore, this study maps the expansion of scientific and academic research conducted concerning blockchain that is relevant to healthcare by utilizing a bibliometric analytic method to understand the state of the art. Bibliometric statistics were utilized to analyze current scientific articles published in the Scopus database from 2016 to 2019. In addition, an overview of the publication trends over the first three months of 2020 was undertaken to understand the research trend for the current year so far. The study serves the purpose of mapping research development trends in healthcare. The outcome discovered some beneficial insights such as the yearly trend of publications, top listed authors, institutes, countries, and publishers from around the world. Moreover, this article assists scholars in developing a theoretical framework to provide a primary source of reference for further studies regarding blockchain technology in the healthcare domain.