A Blockchain-Based Life-Cycle Environmental Management Framework for Hospitals in the COVID-19 Context

【Author】 Gao, Han; Ding, Lieyun; Wang, Yuhang

【Source】ENGINEERING

【影响因子】12.834

【Abstract】During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency, many hospitals were built or renovated around the world to meet the challenges posed by the rising number of infected cases. Environmental management in the hospital life cycle is vital in preventing nosocomial infection and includes many infection control procedures. In certain urgent situations, a hospital must be completed quickly, and work process approval and supervision must therefore be accelerated. Thus, many works cannot be checked in detail. This results in a lack of work liability control and increases the difficulty of ensuring the fulfillment of key infection prevention measures. This study investigates how blockchain technology can transform the work quality inspection workflow to assist in nosocomial infection control under a fast delivery requirement. A blockchain-based life-cycle environmental management framework is proposed to track the fulfillment of crucial infection control measures in the design, construction, and operation stages of hospitals. The proposed framework allows for work quality checking after the work is completed, when some work cannot be checked on time. Illustrative use cases are selected to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed solution. This study provides new insights into applying blockchain technology to address the challenge of environmental management brought by rapid delivery requirements. (c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

【Keywords】Blockchain; Environmental management; Nosocomial infection control; Work quality management; Life-cycle traceability

【发表时间】2023 JAN

【收录时间】2023-05-15

【文献类型】理论模型

【主题类别】

区块链应用-实体经济-医疗领域