Leveraging Blockchain to Enable Smart-Health Applications

Smart health (s-health) is an emerging paradigm that brings together a whole new range of digital data, both personal and non-personal, in order to deliver a holistic approach to health that overcomes the boundaries of the traditional patient caring system. By including non-personal smart city data, mobile s-health applications can improve prediction, prevention, and prescriptive care, while generating feedback that make cities smarter when accounting for and adapting to individual needs. As a result, the constantly ongoing societal challenge of improving individual life will receive additional support. As an example of such life improvement, cities might reduce pollution by promoting mobile applications that incentivize people lacking of adequate physical activity to use alternative transport means. Despite of the envisioned benefits, the diverse nature and jurisdiction of infrastructures and data required to develop s-health applications open up a number of challenges that need to be addressed. In this position paper, we first present a sustainable model for fostering the creation of s-health applications, then identify and discuss the existing challenges, and finally explore the role of blockchain in overcoming some of them.