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Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study

BACKGROUND: In the home care industry, the assignment and tracking of care services are controlled by care centers that are centralized in nature and prone to inefficient information transmission. A lack of trust among the involved parties, information opaqueness, and large manual manipulation resul...

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Autores principales: Chang, Shuchih Ernest, Chen, YiChian, Lu, MingFang, Luo, Hueimin Louis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7420632/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32720903
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15472
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author Chang, Shuchih Ernest
Chen, YiChian
Lu, MingFang
Luo, Hueimin Louis
author_facet Chang, Shuchih Ernest
Chen, YiChian
Lu, MingFang
Luo, Hueimin Louis
author_sort Chang, Shuchih Ernest
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In the home care industry, the assignment and tracking of care services are controlled by care centers that are centralized in nature and prone to inefficient information transmission. A lack of trust among the involved parties, information opaqueness, and large manual manipulation result in lower process efficiency. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore and demonstrate the application of blockchain and smart contract technologies to innovate/renovate home care services for harvesting the desired blockchain benefits of process transparency, traceability, and interoperability. METHODS: An object-oriented analysis/design combined with a unified modeling language tool was used to construct the architecture of the proposed home care service system. System feasibility was evaluated via an implementation test, and a questionnaire survey was performed to collect opinions from home care service respondents knowledgeable about blockchain and smart contracts. RESULTS: According to the comparative analysis results, the proposed design outperformed the existing system in terms of traceability, system efficiency, and process automation. Moreover, for the questionnaire survey, the quantitative analysis results showed that the proposed blockchain-based system had significantly (P<.001) higher mean scores (when compared with the existing system) in terms of important factors, including timeliness, workflow efficiency, automatic notifications, insurance functionality, and auditable traceability. In summary, blockchain-based home care service participants will be able to enjoy improved efficiency, better transparency, and higher levels of process automation. CONCLUSIONS: Blockchain and smart contracts can provide valuable benefits to the home care service industry via distributed data management and process automation. The proposed system enhances user experiences by mitigating human intervention and improving service interoperability, transparency/traceability, and real-time response to home care service events. Efforts in exploring and integrating blockchain-based home care services with emerging technologies, such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence, are expected to provide further benefits and therefore are subject to future research.
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spelling pubmed-74206322020-08-20 Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study Chang, Shuchih Ernest Chen, YiChian Lu, MingFang Luo, Hueimin Louis JMIR Med Inform Original Paper BACKGROUND: In the home care industry, the assignment and tracking of care services are controlled by care centers that are centralized in nature and prone to inefficient information transmission. A lack of trust among the involved parties, information opaqueness, and large manual manipulation result in lower process efficiency. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore and demonstrate the application of blockchain and smart contract technologies to innovate/renovate home care services for harvesting the desired blockchain benefits of process transparency, traceability, and interoperability. METHODS: An object-oriented analysis/design combined with a unified modeling language tool was used to construct the architecture of the proposed home care service system. System feasibility was evaluated via an implementation test, and a questionnaire survey was performed to collect opinions from home care service respondents knowledgeable about blockchain and smart contracts. RESULTS: According to the comparative analysis results, the proposed design outperformed the existing system in terms of traceability, system efficiency, and process automation. Moreover, for the questionnaire survey, the quantitative analysis results showed that the proposed blockchain-based system had significantly (P<.001) higher mean scores (when compared with the existing system) in terms of important factors, including timeliness, workflow efficiency, automatic notifications, insurance functionality, and auditable traceability. In summary, blockchain-based home care service participants will be able to enjoy improved efficiency, better transparency, and higher levels of process automation. CONCLUSIONS: Blockchain and smart contracts can provide valuable benefits to the home care service industry via distributed data management and process automation. The proposed system enhances user experiences by mitigating human intervention and improving service interoperability, transparency/traceability, and real-time response to home care service events. Efforts in exploring and integrating blockchain-based home care services with emerging technologies, such as the internet of things and artificial intelligence, are expected to provide further benefits and therefore are subject to future research. JMIR Publications 2020-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7420632/ /pubmed/32720903 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15472 Text en ©Shuchih Ernest Chang, YiChian Chen, MingFang Lu, Hueimin Louis Luo. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 28.07.2020. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Informatics, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://medinform.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Chang, Shuchih Ernest
Chen, YiChian
Lu, MingFang
Luo, Hueimin Louis
Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title_full Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title_fullStr Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title_full_unstemmed Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title_short Development and Evaluation of a Smart Contract–Enabled Blockchain System for Home Care Service Innovation: Mixed Methods Study
title_sort development and evaluation of a smart contract–enabled blockchain system for home care service innovation: mixed methods study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7420632/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32720903
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/15472
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