By producing a permanent, time-stamped record of the research findings, blockchain technology applied to the field of medicine can increase public confidence in science. The immutability of transactions recorded in a ledger is guaranteed by the 2008 invention of Satoshi Nakamoto: the blockchain technology. The outcome, when applied to the cryptocurrency bitcoin (BTC), is a monetary system that cannot be manipulated by a centralized government because it creates a permanent and precise record of all transactions. The system’s strength stems from the fact that it uses a distributed database as opposed to the centralized databases needed by banks and credit card companies in today’s monetary systems. As with bitcoin, the transactions (scientific data collected) are permanently archived in an unchangeable, immutable manner, which increases trust in the results when the same technology is used in medical research.
Like conducting medical research, exchanging money demands a high degree of trust. Government regulations and central bank supervision in the past have created this trust. Through peer review conducted by reputable medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, medical research has previously tried to establish high levels of trust. Both strategies for building trust are predicated on a dependable central authority, be it the government or a reputable medical journal. Since corruption or unintentional mistakes by the centralized authority can be used to commit fraud, both methods are very vulnerable to it. Widespread mistrust of medical research has resulted as a result of this. Because it establishes a method of relying on a distributed network based on a mathematical algorithm, rather than a centralized authority subject to human error, Bitcoin operates differently.
Most trust is probably needed when conducting financial transactions. People need to be aware that every transaction entered into the ledger must be entirely accurate and impenetrably resistant to future change. With a market capitalization of over $100 billion USD, bitcoin has become a widely used store of value due to the trust that blockchain technology, as it is used in bitcoin, has gained. The total amount of trust in blockchain-based financial systems exceeds $250 billion USD when other cryptocurrencies are taken into account. Similar to this, health care professionals must have confidence that information gleaned from medical research is 100 percent accurate and unchangeable. It is important for doctors to understand that no medical research is fraudulent or copied from another source. Because of blockchain technology, bitcoin is now a widely accepted currency. In a similar vein, blockchain-based medical research will significantly boost confidence in the findings and, as a result, lead to better medical care.