Skyrocketing operational costs, inefficiency, and data breaches continue to stress the healthcare sector. At present, blockchain technology is likely a one-stop solution to all these problems. From ensuring interoperability among doctors and patients to monitoring supply chains and facilitating research, it has unending applications. In the long term, a nationwide blockchain network will improve transparency and ensure better treatment for patients.
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a decentralised system of recording and storing transaction records. It is a shared permanent set of ledgers, built from linked blocks, which consist of a mesh of nodes. Data is recorded in a way such that each node has a copy of the whole chain, constantly being updated. Blockchain makes use of cryptography to allow all participants to access transaction records easily.
What makes blockchain an attractive prospect is that each transaction entered through it is unchangeable. Moreover, data is recorded in a decentralised manner with no central authority (E.g., Banks or Governments). It is a secure and transparent system that establishes trust among the participants.
Can we really use blockchain in healthcare?
Blockchain has a growing number of applications from Cryptocurrency to even Logistics Monitoring. Now it’s finally being recognised as a suitable tool for storing health-related information. It has the potential to significantly reduce costs of current intermediaries and several data breaches that the medical industry suffers. Adoption of blockchain for healthcare will help in generation of better insights and provide more effective treatments to patients.
Here are some of the applications of blockchain in healthcare industry:
Personal Healthcare Data and Privacy
Conventional medical systems give patients less control over their data and even serve as a hindrance to their better treatment. Blockchain technology offers an optimum solution to this problem. Not only will it create a collective data system for each patient where their old as well as new medical records can be kept at one place, it’ll also allow patients to have full control over their data. They can choose to grant access to their information to whomever and whenever they want. Not only that, it’ll also protect patient privacy through its topnotch security
system. This could also have applications in commercial settings, where patients can authorize access to their data to clinical research companies in exchange for receiving monetary
benefits.
Data Security
Due to the occurrence of constant data breaches, security is a prime issue of the healthcare industry. Secure storage of medical data is the most popular blockchain application in this industry. Blockchain’s decentralised, transparent and secure nature makes it a perfect technology for this purpose. Despite being transparent, blockchain conceals the identity of individuals with complex codes to preserve sensitive medical
data.
Interoperability
Traditional healthcare data systems are isolated and not updated. It also remains inaccessible to patients and other doctors. This is highly inefficient and restricts inflow of important patient information to healthcare providers. Obtaining access to a patient’s medical records is a time-consuming process, which often delays treatment. Moreover, miscommunication regarding patient information among medical
professionals is more common and more expensive than can be imagined. Every year it costs the industry around $11 billion dollars.
This decentralised technology allows quick and safe access of data by patients, doctors and other medical providers. It can lead to faster diagnoses and allow doctors to create personalised healthcare plans.
Medical Supply Chain
A lack of transparency in the medical supply chain could raise concerns about the legitimacy of the drugs. Integration of blockchain in the supply chain will ensure proper and transparent records of the whole process. The ledger will record everything from its origin to people who handled it and where until it reaches the patient. This can also be used to monitor costs and emissions.
Research
Patient healthcare data is being created by a lot of sources- physicians, pharmacies, laboratories and hospitals but it remains fragmented, thus, rendering it unusable for research purposes. Blockchain can be used to create a private database for research organisations, so the data can be used to its full potential. Moreover, large amounts of data are required to be stored within the span of the research period and even after that. If it’s not properly recorded or fabricated it could lead to a waste of billions of dollars and years spent on that study. Using blockchain billions of data points can be safely stored. Patients can also sell their genetic information and other valuable data to research organisations.
Is blockchain a foolproof system?
Not at all.
In fact, it is far from being foolproof.
Blockchain has many potential applications but each application comes with its own set of challenges, such as:
Private blockchains required: Only private blockchains can be used to store healthcare data (protected health information) as otherwise it’d be accessible to everyone.
Security: Although blockchain is protected against most cyberattacks, it’s still vulnerable to zero-day attacks and bugs, and social engineering. Thus, security must also be the top priority for storing sensitive data.
Prerequisites for nationwide interoperability: The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology defined the parameters needed for nationwide interoperability such as:
● Ubiquitous, secure network infrastructure
● Verifiable identity and authentication of all participants
● Consistent representation of authorization to access electronic health
information, and several other requirements.
The current technology fails to fully adhere to these requirements due to certain limitations. Nevertheless, blockchain technology is getting updated every day and has been successfully used by many healthcare organisations.
Conclusion
Blockchain technology has yet to reach its supreme. Many challenges still remain unresolved and the creation of a nationwide blockchain system is still a faraway dream. Nevertheless, technological advancement will allow blockchain to improve while it continues to find new applications and offer good results over time. Even now, there exist multiple applications in the healthcare industry including safe storage and sharing of data. Multiple other organisational changes will have to accompany it and a blockchain revolution is sure to follow.
