Trust-building in digital health: An exploration of the business case for Block Chain technologies

This paper aims to shed light on the phenomenon of citizen adoption of digital health mechanisms. The study draws upon theories from information systems and economics to propose and operationalize a model explaining users’ uncertainty to adopt digital health and contribute with their own personal data.

We further conduct a design-based examination of block chains and their potential to enable trustworthy transactions of personal health data.The results of our research support block chains as important technological artefacts in data-intensive digital health contexts: block chains nurture citizens’ trust by providing five technology affordances: Decentralized management of information, End-to-End communication, Controlled Transparency, Irreversibility and Self-executing contracts.