Conceptualizing the role of blockchain in omnichannel healthcare: a Delphi study
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0230 |
| Published date | 28 February 2022 |
| Date | 28 February 2022 |
| Pages | 782-800 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Information behaviour & retrieval,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management |
| Author | Shreya Sangal,Achint Nigam,Chitrakshi Bhutani |
Conceptualizing the role
of blockchain in omnichannel
healthcare: a Delphi study
Shreya Sangal and Achint Nigam
Department of Management, Birla Institute of Technology and Science,
Pilani, India, and
Chitrakshi Bhutani
Department of Management, Fortune Institute of International Business,
New Delhi, India
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to identify the challenges in the healthcare industry as it adopts an omnichannel
setup in an emerging economy context. Further, the study determines the scope of blockchain in addressing
these challenges.
Design/methodology/approach –The study uses a qualitative approach to understand the challenges in
the omnichannel healthcare industry and know the scope of blockchain in building an omnichannel healthcare
system. In the first stage, it did an in-depth analysis of the extant literature, followed by a Delphi study with 24
healthcare experts.
Findings –The study presents the current challenges in the omnichannel healthcare sector in an emerging
economy. Further, it develops a novel conceptual framework for blockchain adoption in the omnichannel
healthcare industry. The study also presents propositions that will help healthcare service providers enhance
decision-making concerning the adoption of blockchain in the healthcare industry.
Research limitations/implications –The research results may lack generalizability due to the exploratory
approach and emerging economies context. Theoretically, in this study, the authors extend the theory of swift
trust and organization information processing theory in an omnichannel healthcare context.
Practical implications –The propositions provided in this paper can help healthcare managers make
strategic decisions on the scope of adoption of blockchain for omnichannel healthcare.
Originality/value –This study explores the understudied area of challenges in omnichannel healthcare and
the scope of blockchain for omnichannel healthcare in an emerging economy context.
Keywords Blockchain, Omnichannel healthcare, Token economy, Disruptive technologies, Consumer trust
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Blockchain, a disruptive technology, was first introduced by Nakamoto (2008) in a seminal
paper on bitcoin. Blockchain is a combination of two words, a “block”that stores coded
information and a “chain”that represents cryptographically connected blocks (Casino et al.,
2019;Christidis and Devetsikiotis, 2016). In simple words, it is a way of recording transactions
that makes it difficult to change, hack or remove the information from the system (Liu and Ye,
2021;Nowi
nski and Kozma, 2017;Trautman and Molesky, 2019). It is a security-oriented
technology that helps keep the exchanges and record-keeping transactions truly secure. Once
any information is stored in blockchain, it cannot be overwritten, erased or modified. The new
information can only be appended to it (Tapscott and Tapscott, 2017). According to a report,
the total spending on blockchain amounted to 4.5 billion US dollars in 2020, which is expected
to grow to 19 billion US dollars by 2024 (Liu, 2021). This IT innovation is impacting the
developed as well as emerging economies (Mougayar, 2016;Hughes et al., 2019;Swan, 2015).
Blockchain has evolved as a general-purpose technology through the years with its
application in various sectors like healthcare (Agbo et al., 2019), insurance (Boulos et al., 2019),
AJIM
74,5
782
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 15 August 2021
Revised 18 October 2021
30 December 2021
10 February 2022
Accepted 11 February 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 74 No. 5, 2022
pp. 782-800
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-08-2021-0230
supply chain (Kouhizadeh et al., 2021;Saberi et al., 2019), finance (Casey et al., 2018),
marketing and advertising (Kumar et al., 2021) among others.
In the healthcare industry, transformation from traditional methods to digital methods is
taking place at an incredible pace. The adoption of e-health, telemedicine and mHealth into
the routine healthcare ecosystem has positively impacted the lives of medical service
providers as well as patients (Abu-Elezz et al., 2020;De Aguiar et al., 2020). Healthcare, being a
complex and pluralistic product, involves constant interaction across a distinct set of
individuals and organizations (Clauson et al., 2018;Hansen and Baroody, 2020). The growth
of health information technology (IT) in emerging economies is still slow compared to
developed economies (Kruse et al., 2016). India, an emerging economy, is home to over 1.3
billion people, with the second-highest population in the world. With the growing population,
the expenditure on health in emerging economies like India is also rising steadily. The Indian
healthcare industry is currently estimated to be worth 372 billion US dollars (IBEF, 2021). The
total public health expenditure of the country amounts to around 20 billion US dollars, which
is about 1.28% of its total GDP (Statista, 2021).
The healthcare industry includes medical professionals, nurses and administrators,
patients and their relatives, clinical organizations like hospitals, medical care facilities,
diagnostic laboratories, dispensaries, healthcare delivery processes, regulators,
policymakers and intermediaries (Vourgidis et al., 2018). Due to the complex nature of the
healthcare industry, the interoperability between its various stakeholders is complex and
limited, gradually leading to increased costs and lower efficiency (Hansen and Baroody,
2020). In a traditional healthcare management system, the hospitals are the primary
custodians of data. This makes it difficult for healthcare professionals and patients to have a
consolidated view of their complete medical history as it is fragmented among different
hospitals and care centers. Cloud-based centralized databases have been prone to frequent
failures, errors, cyberattacks and loss of critical medical data. Such systems have suffered
due to a lack of privacy, security, accountability and consumer trust (Bahga and Madisetti,
2013;Fern
andez-Carde~
nosa et al., 2012;Martin, 2018;Wang et al., 2021).
In the healthcare sector, consumer trust plays a central role in developing relationships
among the stakeholders. Studies in the previous literature highlight that trust plays an
essential role in three scenarios: emergency response, accessing medical data and finding a
reliable service provider (Hawlitschek, 2019;Hong and Oh, 2020). The digitalization of
healthcare processes has impacted consumers’trust due to their concern for privacy, security
and information transparency (LaRosa and Danks, 2018).
With the healthcare sector shifting to new channels, the world is adjusting and accepting
these channels, especially due to the massive burden on the need for healthcare during and
after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 (Harris and Sandal, 2021;Nigam, 2021). Through
telemedicine, remote healthcare delivery to manage the shortage of healthcare resources was
made possible. Many healthcare organizations started sharing medical devices, medicines
and health records to meet urgent needs and match the paucity of time during the pandemic
(Kruse et al., 2016;Wang et al., 2021). However, the digitalized healthcare system in an
emerging economy is not yet able to provide the required level of information security and
privacy, operational transparency, immutability and traceability for managing health
records, detection of frauds of patients’insurance claims and credentials of physicians
(Ahmad et al., 2021). Given the uncertainty in the post-pandemic times, the patients may not
be able to approach their usual healthcare provider, due to which they need their data to be
shared with other healthcare providers confidentially. Sometimes they may also prefer to
have a second opinion from other healthcare providers. Still, they cannot do so due to patients’
inability to control their medical data. The researchers suggest using new and innovative
technologies to share resources in a trusted manner (Behl et al., 2021a,b;Kumar et al., 2021;
Mackey and Nayyar, 2017). There is a need for secure interactions, information sharing and
Role of
blockchain in
omnichannel
healthcare
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