Résumé
The aim of this paper is to measure the environmental impact of an innovative solution using blockchain in healthcare. Thanks to this technology, new healthcare services such as the traceability of patient consents are being developed with the aim of reducing costs and improving quality of care.However, despite their virtual nature, digital technologies, and blockchain technologies in particular, are based on physical infrastructures that generate significant externalities for the environment and consume a lot of energy during their manufacture, use and end-of-life. These externalities are one of the main criticisms of these technologies. As part of a case study, we carried out a comparative Life Cycle Assessment of two solutions for managing patient consent in clinical trials. In this article, we establish that the proposed innovative solution based on blockchain technology has an average reduction in environmental impact of 44% compared with the current solution, while performing the same function.