Privacy preservation in blockchain-based healthcare data sharing: A systematic review
Kun Li, Ankur Lohachab, Michel Dumontier, Visara Urovi
Abstract
Blockchain technology promises enhanced data ownership, control, and interoperability in healthcare, yet security and privacy concerns continue to hinder its adoption. Existing surveys examine blockchain-based privacy challenges, but they lack a systematic analysis and maturity evaluation of privacy-preserving techniques tailored to healthcare data sharing. This paper presents a systematic review of blockchain-based privacy-preserving solutions, analyzing blockchain details, applied privacy methods, regulatory compliance, and maturity levels using Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs). Our findings reveal that authentication and authorization is the most explored stage, dominated by smart contracts and ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption. Proxy re-encryption is frequently used for data transfer, while privacy-preserving search and verification remain underexplored. On/off-chain mechanisms are commonly applied to balance privacy and storage efficiency. TRL assessment shows that most solutions remain at the proof-of-concept stage (TRL3), with only limited progress to prototype validation (TRL4-TRL5), highlighting the gap between experimental designs and real-world deployment. To guide developers and researchers, we identify two primary patterns of blockchain integration and propose a framework for system design. We also compare methods across data-sharing stages, outlining their strengths and limitations to support informed selection. In conclusion, while research interest is growing, the field remains at an early stage of maturity. Addressing this gap requires stronger implementation capacity, access to clinical data, and robust regulatory alignment. We emphasize the importance of clinical validation and real-world testing to advance privacy-preserving blockchain solutions toward practical adoption in healthcare.