Regulatory Considerations of Non-Fungible Tokens in Healthcare
Purpose: To combine the perspectives of health and commercialization experts on the ethical and regulatory needs for non-fungible token (NFT) implementation in healthcare. Design: Perspective Methods: For a multidisciplinary perspective by an interdisciplinary group, current event articles and research articles were interpreted and assessed. Results: Health data has become fragmented and disorganized, resulting in poor accessibility, increased administrative costs, and integrity vulnerability. Healthcare is uniquely suited to adopt blockchain and NFT technology as potential solutions. The incorporation of blockchain technology may offer multiple improvements in data-sharing through consensus, tokenization, and decentralization. However, the current regulatory infrastructure to support blockchain is poorly defined. Conclusions: Healthcare NFTs would revolutionize patient control over their health data and promote more ethical transparency of data ownership while also reducing administrative security costs. However, blockchain poses unprecedented requirements of healthcare regulation within the unique realms of patient privacy and data ownership. Large-scale implementation of blockchain cannot be achieved without regulatory collaboration.
