Connecting Patient-Centric Blockchains with Multilayer P2P Networks and Digital Platforms

Healthcare represents a data-sensitive industry, and blockchain validation is a disrupting innovation in the field. Medicine ecosystems are increasingly patient-centric, being nurtured by growing amounts of (big) data always in need of validation. Blockchains play a vital role in this process, enabling transactions among Peer-to-Peer (P2P) entities without the need for a trusted third party, adding value to certified data. Patients represent a primary stakeholder that is linked to others through an interactive network. Complementary layers, linked by replica nodes and/or connecting edges, are fitter than atomistic networks to represent the multisided blockchain applications. These networks of networks increasingly embed digital platforms that represent a virtual bridging stakeholder. Being blockchains a distributed ledger that shares data among a network of peers, they can be naturally linked to digital networks. And digitalization – with its IT features - makes the stakeholders’ interaction intrinsically fitter for blockchains. Digital scalability deployed by platforms and their ubiquitous and permanent 24/7 features enhance the value co-creation of stakeholders (patients with healthcare providers, as MedTech players) that participate in multiple blockchains. The synergistic interaction of eHealth digital platforms and multilayer networks creates a proactive ecosystem that leverages healthcare blockchains, fostering massive adoption in a sensitive industry where privacy concerns increasingly matter. Patient-centric blockchains emerge as a natural validating by-product of these interactions, and may strongly contribute to fostering long-termed healthcare sustainability. This is also due to the circumstance that many healthcare bottlenecks may be softened thanks to blockchain adoption. This chapter shows which are some possible win-win patterns of the networked P2P interactions through blockchains. The intrinsic scalability of the model makes it ideally ubiquitous, with potential applications beyond the sensitive healthcare industry.