Call for Papers

Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY) is the leading international open access journal that amplifies and disseminates platform approaches and distributed ledger technology research and innovation in healthcare. The journal invites multidisciplinary researchers, engineers technologists, developers, analysts, and healthcare leaders and innovators making strides in the development and advancement of the field, to submit original research, concepts/methodologies, case use, pilot implementations, reviews, technical briefs, short reports, opinions, and Letters to the Editor. Topics in this exciting field include, and are not limited to:

Fundamentals of Blockchain and DLT for Healthcare

  • Theoretical contributions on Blockchain and DLT
  • Distributed consensus and fault tolerance solutions, including domain-specific consensus (e.g., for IoT)
  • Protocols and algorithms
  • Distributed Ledger Analytics
  • Tradeoffs between decentralization, scalability, performance, and security
  • Sharding and layer 2
  • Combination between Blockchain and distributed databases (e.g., IPFS)

Fundamentals of Decentralized Apps, Smart Contracts, and Chain Code

  • Development languages and tooling
  • Security, Privacy, Attacks, Forensics
  • Transaction Monitoring and Analysis
  • Collaboration between on-chain and off-chain code
  • Token Economy and incentives
  • NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) and protocols
  • Distributed Trust
  • Oracles
  • Blockchain as a service
  • Blockchain-defined networking

Application and service cases of DLT and Smart-Contracts

  • Identity management (e.g., Self-sovereign Identity and Decentralized Identifiers, Open ID Connect)
  • Finance and payments
  • DeFi (Decentralized Finance)
  • IoT and cyber physical systems
  • Supply chain management
  • Networking, Edge and Cloud Technologies
  • Blockchain for Beyond 5G and 6G Technologies, Telecom Process and Operation
  • Blockchain and AI (e.g., for federated learning)
  • Services or Resources Marketplaces
  • Public sector Blockchain solutions and infrastructures (e.g., EBSI)
  • Blockchain for education, public administration, health
  • Results from large collaborative projects on these topics

Computing Platform

  • Computing theory
  • Computer architecture
  • Grid and cloud computing and systems
  • Distributed and parallel computing systems
  • Embedded computing and systems
  • Fault-tolerant computing and systems
  • Ubiquitous computing and systems
  • Operation systems
  • Secure OS and Trust OS

Networking Platform

  • Ad hoc and sensor network platform
  • Broadband communication platform
  • Microwave communication platform
  • Mobile and wireless platform
  • Satellite communication platform
  • Smart home and M2M (machine to machine) network
  • System and network management and troubleshooting
  • Software defined network

Convergence Platform

  • Business service platform
  • Business management and intelligence
  • Internet of things
  • Service innovation and entrepreneurship
  • Service oriented computing and applications
  • Social networks
  • Security and privacy issues in emerging platforms
  • Convergence security
  • Cyber security and digital forensics
  • Smart grid and its security
  • Financial platform

Smart Human & Media Platform

  • Game platform
  • Interaction and HCI
  • Scientific and big data visualization platform
  • Smart UI/UX platform
  • Virtual and augmented reality
  • E-Learning & U-Learning platform
  • Web platform
  • Artificial intelligence platform
  • Big data platform
  • Semantic web technology platform

Submission Details

posted January 1, 2024

Platform Approaches and DLT Research and Innovation in Healthcare

Healthcare leaders and innovators in platform technology are making significant strides in the development and advancement of this field, and real world practical use of frontier​ technologies. This accelerates diagnosis, cures, increases quality​of life, lowers the cost of care, provides more access to better health outcomes, and preventative patient​-provider action - all geared toward novel approaches to solve old problems that plague the medical community.

The groundbreaking BHTY open access peer reviewed journal has announced a Call​ for​ Papers for platform​ approaches and DLT original​ research, reports, reviews, and case​ use to demonstrate how this field is impacting the current healthcare landscape, and future​ of​ health. 

In what ways do healthcare leaders and innovators stand out in platform technology?

  • Interoperability: Platform technologists understand the importance of interoperability, enabling seamless data exchange and integration between systems and devices
  • Scalability: Successful platform technology leaders design scalable solutions that can adapt to the evolving needs of healthcare organizations
  • Collaboration: Multidisciplinary collaborators fill practical market needs
  • Patient-Centric Focus: They prioritize patient-centric care, and enable engagement, empowerment, and access to health data
  • Security and Compliance: They prioritize security and compliance adhering to healthcare regulations around the globe
  • Economic Viability: They understand the financial aspects of healthcare and work toward value purposed solutions for organizations, payors, and patients
  • Education and Advocacy: They educate the healthcare industry about the benefits and best practices of using new technology and approaches, ad advocate for policy and support
  • Adaptability: They respond to shifts in patient needs, policies, and technology trends

As innovation moves out of academia and into real world implementation, researchers and multidisciplinary stakeholders are invited to present new insights, original research, and results impacting the healthcare sector around the globe.

Research, reviews, and case use will be published in Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY) - the leading international open access ​peer reviewed journal that amplifies and disseminates decentralized platform approaches in healthcare and distributed ledger technology research and innovations. Fields of interest include healthcare information systems, leveraging data science tools and techniques, interoperability, consent mechanisms, privacy preservation, security of health data, clinical trials management, clinical computing, cryptography, supply chain management, revenue cycle automation, immersive technologies, tokenomics, governance, regulation and policy, network technologies, and failed experiments in this expanding specialty field of research.

Indexed in

PubMed and PubMed Central  |  Scopus  |  Google Scholar  |  Engineering Village | ProQuest Health & Medical Complete  |  ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Program | ProQuest Public Health  |  Unpaywall and others

Submission Details
Upload your manuscript through the journal Submission Portal at https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/about/submissions

Manuscript Preparation Details
https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/authors-submission

Download the BHTY Manuscript Template to assist developing your paper at https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/6 

Editorial Board located at https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/about/editorialTeam

posted September 28, 2023

BHTY 2023 Call for Manuscripts 

BHTY is delighted to announce the new 2023 Call for Manuscripts, focused on blockchain for healthcare and data science. BHTY editors seek high quality and novel research, including failed experiments, to share with a global ecosystem. Visit the editorial board here.

Target Participants

BHTY invites scholars, graduate students, post docs, researchers, professors and market experts to develop and submit a manuscript addressing the opportunities, challenges, and real world case use in healthcare, which may be addressed by leveraging data science tools and techniques, and blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

Submitted manuscripts are expected to provide new conceptual, theoretical, and practical insights based on empirical data emerging from recent market or research activities. Use cases from demonstrably successful existing distributed ledger communities across a range of sectors are also welcome, as the learnings may be applicable in healthcare scenarios today or in the future.

Research Topics

Manuscripts may focus on, but are not limited to, the leverage of data, blockchain or digital ledger technology for healthcare, data science tools and techniques, and failed experiments including the following topics:

  • Precision medicine
  • Data sharing to inform public health
  • Security infrastructure requirements of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) for healthcare
  • Quadruple Helix Innovation - encompassing science, policy, industry and society
  • Frameworks, methods and tools to develop and align blockchain/DLT-based projects for multiple parties with Peer-to-Peer (P2P) capabilities
  • Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and varieties of consensus-oriented blockchain-based associations
  • Cybersecurity of distributed ledger communities, including permissioned, permissionless, and hybrid permissions, as well as exchange and non-exchange cases
  • Aligning multiple stakeholders and consortium members in a distributed ledger-based community with shared ecosystem scaling objectives
  • Specific use cases may include:
    • Patient health records
    • Human and social aspects
    • Health systems interoperability
    • Patient and device identity management
    • Legal and policy challenges
    • Digital tokens and incentives
    • Medical payments and billing
    • Data security, privacy, anonymity
    • Healthcare operations
    • Data provenance
    • Fraud detection and prevention
    • Decentralized trust management
    • Pharmaceutical supply chain
    • Population health use cases
    • Social determinants of health
    • Clinical trials and clinical research
    • Health equity and disparities
    • Genomic and imaging data
    • COVID-19 pandemic applications
    • Facilitation of intervention and implementation strategies
    • Vaccination passports
    • Big data management in health
    • Improved health, prevention, diagnosis and treatment

Journal statistics (2022)

  • Reject Rate 56%
  • Days to First Editorial Decision  23
  • Days to Accept  63 
  • Acceptance Rate  25%
  • Average days to publication   73

Note: BHTY maintains high editorial review standards reflected by acceptance in leading indexes. Author revisions add days to turnaround, acceptance, and publication timeframes. Journal staff is happy to streamline papers for authors requiring fast turnaround. There is no extra charge. 

Advantages of publishing in Blockchain in Healthcare Today  

  1. Fast and user-friendly submission portal
  2. Excellent customer service –calls and emails answered in detail within 24-48 hours
  3. Qualify for the Editors Best Article Award amplifying work across media announced at the Annual ConV2X Symposium
  4. High-quality rigorous peer review
  5. High market and public media exposure to amplify research and results
  6. Read across 120 countries worldwide, with 63 -75,000 impressions/mo as per Google Analytics
  7. Accepted to PubMed, Scopus, EngineeringVillage, Proquest indexes and others
  8. 100% OPEN ACCESS - there are No Paywalls or limits to article access for maximum exposure and reuse by authors
  9. Video abstracts, Plain language, and Graphical summaries to amplify work
  10. NEW Transparent Peer Review (TPR) option

How to Participate

Submission Portal
Authors must follow guidelines published on the Blockchain and Healthcare Today (BHTY) Submission Portal.

Use the original research article below to model your manuscript:

BHTY is published on a no-deadline continuous basis to reflect a rapid, evolving field.

Audience:   Viewership includes leadership from research, business, universities, consultants, entrepreneurs/startups, biopharma/device/pharmacy, government, policy, NGO, engineers, health information technologists, cybersecurity, auditors, computational engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, healthcare network users, public health, hospitals and innovation labs, and payor organizations  across the globe - and invites all those with an interest in the latest knowledge on blockchain technology and DLT to join the community. 

Note: APC applies unless your university or organization has a Publish and Read Agreement on file.

Waivers will be granted UPON REQUEST to lower-middle income countries as per the World Bank (details here).

 

Call for Papers:  Negative, Unconventional, Null, Neutral, and Failed Research.

Progress in science is not only made based on positive data, but also on negative results. Scientists have become too accustomed to celebrating only success, and have forgotten that most technological advances stem from failure. When negative results aren’t published in high-impact journals, other scientists can’t learn from them and end up repeating failed experiments, leading to a waste of public funds and a delay in genuine progress.

Negative results are results that do not support a research hypothesis and nullify the aim of the research. Negative, or null results, are also important because they contribute to our knowledge of the topic as much as positive results do. This is critically important in new research fields and markets that are evolving in real world applications and scaled implementations.

Understandably, researchers are particularly challenged to disclose negative results that are not consistent with previously published positive data. In addition, positive findings are more likely to generate citations and funding for additional research, but NEGATIVE DATA saves institutions funding wasteful projects and puts the ecosystem on the right track for faster solutions and outcomes that benefit the entire ecosystem.

Partners in Digital Health would like to facilitate these critical efforts to accelerate research success, augment true innovation, and create a trusted repository where research, public, and private communities can find unconventional answers to streamline meaningful solutions.

The publisher will WAIVE THE APC for these manuscripts.

We know such papers are not typically cited, and discouraged in academia, however, negative results are essential to advancing knowledge in the field, and may even contribute to changing reward systems in academia in the future.

Topic areas will include but are not limited to the following:

  • What and why the research did not work, eg., rigor in study design, lack of funding, issue with patient recruitment, support from superiors or colleagues, bias, etc
  • Analysis of impact
  • Consequences of negative research
  • Lessons on mitigating negative results and why
  • Benefits of sharing research
  • Good research practices, best practices
  • Key personal learnings
  • Addressing issues of reproducibility
  • Ethical violations 

This list is not comprehensive. We welcome the opportunity to consider papers on related and complementary topics.

Submission Requirements

  • Papers should be original submissions not previously published or under active consideration by other journal
  • Papers will be 3,000 maximum word count
  • Submissions must include a section for an analysis and recommendations for future researchers, and journal readers

The APC for these papers will be waived

To submit a paper, please click the journal link below and follow instructions.

All papers will be peer reviewed and follow the journal’s peer review process and workflow.

There is no deadline for these manuscripts.

If you have questions about the suitability of a particular paper prior to submitting, please contact the managing editor, John Russo, PharmD, at

j.russo@partnersindigitalhealth.com or info@partnersindigitalhealth.com

 

Submission Portal: https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/about/submissions

Posted September 5, 2022

Special Theme Issue: Blockchain Tracking and Tracing for the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Device Industry

Blockchain in Healthcare Today (BHTY) is delighted to announce the theme issue entitled “Blockchain Tracking and Tracing for the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Device Industry."

Blockchain technology offers reliable end-to-end tracking, monitoring and verification of drugs, including vaccines, across the supply chain. It enables faster manufacturing and resiliency including essential detection and correction for processes that improve productivity, efficiency, compliance and patient safety for the development, testing, packaging, and distribution of drug products in the pharmaceutical and healthcare device industry.

In the USA, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) will require full traceability of drugs by 2023. In developing countries, The Health Research Funding organization reports 10–30% of available drugs are fake, while the WHO has reported approximately 30% of medicines sold in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is counterfeit. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports counterfeit drugs pose a serious risk to public health and safety, while the OECD has reported the counterfeit pharmaceutical industry is worth $200 billion annually.

Technological solutions that provide track and trace capabilities to manufacturers, distributors, and others in the healthcare supply chain can keep global health citizens safer and more confident about the integrity of their prescription drugs and online pharmacy purchases. Distributed ledger technology can be used ensure the integrity and efficacy of pharmaceuticals by monitoring suppliers, verifying quality and authenticity of the supply chain while enhancing quality control, auditing and standards in tandem with NFC, RFID, QR Codes, GPS, metal tags — technologies that are based on the contactless transmission of data. 

Blockchain technology can be a solution that also increases trust toward a brand ensuring product authenticity throughout the supply chain. BHTY is pleased to issue this critical Call for Papers to examine blockchain technology applications and use in the pharmaceutical and device supply chain in healthcare.  Topics of interest may include but are not limited to:

  • Blockchain compatibility with QR codes, NFC, RFID or GPS
  • Contactless transfer of data
  • Counterfeit drugs and fraud
  • Expiration date
  • Global trade and Import/Export
  • Health policy and global implications (meeting SDGs)
  • Inventory and order management
  • Pandemic (PPP) Demand planning
  • Product and/or vaccine authenticity
  • Smart supply chain with IoT and Cloud
  • Smart tags
  • Supplier management
  • Supply chain analytics
  • Supply chain models and management
  • Supply chain optimization

Key Dates for Submissions

Submission Deadline:                                                April 30, 2022

Initial Decisions:                                                          June 15, 2022

Revisions Submitted and Decisions Made:            August 15, 2022

Publication:                                                                  October 30, 2022

Submission Guidelines

Papers should present new, original results and reviews that are unpublished. Please prepare your manuscript as per BHTY guidelines here. 

To submit a manuscript to this BHTY theme issue, please visit https://blockchainhealthcaretoday.com/index.php/journal/about/submissions. Be sure you have first registered. Include your ORCID ID if you have one.  Click the selection “Special Issue” for your submission.

Your manuscript will undergo full peer-review, consistent with BHTY criterion here. All papers will appear together in an e-collection (theme issue) guest edited by the academics listed below. 

The theme issue article processing charge (APC) is discounted 30% and will be $1,015. (the APC for the open access specialty journal is regularly $1,450, a discount of US $435.00). Waivers are available as per the BHTY Waiver Policy.

Indexed In

SCOPUS, Engineering Village, Index Copernicus, Unpaywall, NEBIS, Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research (GFMER), ScienceOpen, Google Scholar, and the PKP metadata harvester.

Journal Editors-in-Chief

Bill Buchanan, OBE, Professor, School of Computing, Edinburgh Napier University; Fellow of the BCS, United Kingdom

John D. Halamka, MD, MS, President, Mayo Clinic Platform, USA