  The transparent and decentralized characteristics associated with blockchain
can be both appealing and problematic when applied to a healthcare use-case. As
health data is highly sensitive, it is also highly regulated to ensure the
privacy of patients. At the same time, access to health data and
interoperability is in high demand. Regulatory frameworks such as GDPR and
HIPAA are, amongst other objectives, meant to contribute to mitigating the risk
of privacy violations in health data. Blockchain features can likely improve
interoperability and access control to health data, and at the same time,
preserve or even increase, the privacy of patients. Blockchain applications
should address compliance with the current regulatory framework to increase
real-world feasibility. This exploratory work indicates that published
proof-of-concepts in the health domain comply with GDRP, to an extent.
Blockchain developers need to make design choices to be compliant with GDPR
since currently, none available blockchain platform can show compliance out of
the box.
