Blockchain Technology in Healthcare within the Global South: Mapping the Area and Developing a Research Scenario

Africa's steady technological expansion, coupled with the advent of pandemics that cause severe public health challenges, underscores the critical need to build resilient healthcare systems. This article outlines the potential of blockchain within African healthcare and transformations it has triggered. This research fosters scientific and practical thinking for developing systems that respond to contextual exigencies. Furthermore, we conduct a scientific assessment to: 1) consolidate existing research on Blockchain within healthcare in Africa; 2) comprehend technology and theory commonalities within research; 3) outline use cases of this disruptive technology, 4) identify areas of consideration in the broad African healthcare sector, while identifying scientific lacunae to develop new theoretical guidelines. Our multi-method approach fulfills appeals by emerging literature regarding novel methodological framework development for interpreting phenomena, and comprehending global trends. Consequently, our research impacts academia and industry, primarily in the development of a legal and regulatory framework for the integration of blockchain technology into African healthcare.