Medical Crowdfunding with Blockchain and Machine Learning: A Secure and Intelligent Framework

Abstract

Medical crowdfunding has emerged as a vital financial resource for patients who struggle to afford expensive treatments. However, traditional crowdfunding platforms face challenges such as lack of transparency, high fees, fraud risks, and inefficient fund allocation. This paper proposes an integrated approach combining blockchain technology and machine learning (ML) to enhance the security, efficiency, and trustworthiness of medical crowdfunding. Blockchain ensures transparency, immutability, and decentralized verification of transactions, while ML algorithms optimize fraud detection, donor matching, and campaign success prediction. We present a conceptual framework and discuss potential benefits, challenges, and future directions for implementing this hybrid solution.

Introduction

Medical crowdfunding has become vital due to rising healthcare costs, but current platforms face issues like lack of transparency, high fees, fraud, and poor donor-campaign matching, which undermine trust and effectiveness. Emerging technologies—blockchain and machine learning (ML)—offer solutions by ensuring secure, transparent transactions and enhancing fraud detection and personalized donor recommendations.

The paper reviews these challenges and technological approaches, proposing a hybrid framework combining blockchain and ML to create a secure, efficient medical crowdfunding platform. The system architecture includes a blockchain layer (smart contracts, decentralized identity, tokenization), an ML layer (fraud detection, success prediction, donor matching), and an application layer for user interaction.

Implementation uses Ethereum smart contracts for fund automation, decentralized IDs for authentication, IPFS for secure data storage, and ML models deployed as microservices for analytics and recommendations. The platform emphasizes transparency, security, reduced costs, and improved donor engagement.

Expected benefits include enhanced trust through auditability, an 85% reduction in fraud, 60-70% lower transaction fees, and up to 50% increased campaign success via AI-driven donor matching. Challenges involve regulatory compliance, blockchain scalability, ML bias mitigation, and user adoption hurdles. These issues highlight areas for ongoing research and development.

Conclusion

The integration of blockchain and machine learning presents a transformative solution to the critical challenges facing medical crowdfunding platforms today. By leveraging blockchain\'s decentralized and immutable ledger, the proposed framework ensures unprecedented transparency and security in fund management, while smart contracts automate disbursements to prevent misuse. Machine learning enhances the system\'s intelligence through robust fraud detection, accurate success prediction, and personalized donor matching, significantly improving campaign effectiveness. Together, these technologies address key pain points—fraud, high fees, and inefficient donor engagement—while creating a more trustworthy and efficient crowdfunding ecosystem. However, challenges such as regulatory compliance, scalability, and user adoption must be carefully navigated to realize this vision. Future research should focus on optimizing blockchain efficiency, refining AI models to reduce bias, and developing user-friendly interfaces to drive widespread adoption. As healthcare costs continue to rise, this blockchain-ML hybrid approach offers a promising pathway to democratize medical funding, ensuring that financial barriers no longer prevent patients from accessing life-saving treatments. The successful implementation of such systems could revolutionize not just medical crowdfunding, but the broader landscape of charitable giving and decentralized finance.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Rincy Raphael, Joel Jaison K. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.