A blockchain-based healthcare data marketplace: prototype and demonstration

Objectives This study aimed to develop healthcare data marketplace using blockchain-based B2C model that ensures the transaction of healthcare data among individuals, companies, and marketplaces. Materials and methods We designed an architecture for the healthcare data marketplace using blockchain. A healthcare data marketplace was developed using Panacea, MySQL 8.0, JavaScript library, and Node.js. We evaluated the performance of the data marketplace system in 3 scenarios. Results We developed mobile and web applications for healthcare data marketplace. The transaction data queries were executed fully within about 1-2 s, and approximately 9.5 healthcare data queries were processed per minute in each demonstration scenario. Discussion Blockchain-based healthcare data marketplaces have shown compliance performance in the process of data collection and will provide a meaningful role in analyzing healthcare data. Conclusion The healthcare data marketplace developed in this project can iron out time and place limitations and create a framework for gathering and analyzing fragmented healthcare data. Lay Summary We developed and evaluated a blockchain-based data marketplace for the transaction of healthcare data. Thus, the architecture of the healthcare data marketplace has been designed. The data marketplace has developed a mobile application for personal data collection consent and a web application that allows individuals and companies to check the data collection process. We demonstrated 3 scenarios for data marketplace performance evaluation. It displayed compliance performance in the data collection process of the data marketplace. The data marketplace developed in this study will provide an opportunity to collect fragmented medical data and is expected to develop a framework for data collection and analysis.