Use of Blockchain Technology in the Domain of Physical Exercise, Physical Activity, Sport, and Active Ageing: A Systematic Review

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health Vol. 19; no. 13; p. 8129
• Main Authors: Lopez-Barreiro, Juan, Alvarez-Sabucedo, Luis, Garcia-Soidan, Jose Luis, Santos-Gago, Juan M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 02-07-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Access control; Aging; Algorithms; Blockchain; Decision making; Digital currencies; Domains; Electronic Health Records; Exercise; Fault tolerance; Gamification; Health care; Information storage; Physical activity; Physical exercise; Repositories; Review; Systematic review; Technology; Third party; sport activity; health promotion; training; DLT; fitness; eHealth
• ISSN: 1660-4601; 1661-7827; 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19138129

Blockchain technology provides a distributed support for information storage and traceability. Recently, it has been booming in a wide variety of domains: finance, food, energy, and health. In the field of physical activity, physical exercise, sport, and active ageing, this technology could also originate some interesting services introducing support for reliable repository of results, for gamification, or for secure data interchange. This systematic review explores the use of blockchain in this context. The objective is to determine to which extent this technology has fulfilled the potential of blockchain to bring these new added-value services. The authors explored 5 repositories in search of papers describing solutions applied to the above-mentioned frame. 17 papers were selected for full-text analysis, and they displayed diverse applications of blockchain, such as Fitness and healthcare, Sport, and Active ageing. A detailed analysis shows that the solutions found do not leverage all the possibilities of blockchain technology. Most of the solutions analyzed use blockchain for managing, sharing, and controlling access to data and do not exploit the possibilities of Smart Contracts or oracles. Additionally, the advantages of the blockchain model have not been fully exploited to engage users using approaches such as gamification.