How can Blockchain transform Healthcare Industry?

Published in

Game of Life

5 min readApr 9, 2021

Blockchain technology growing at a rapid speed has disrupted the entire digital world. The stats of Blockchain in healthcare anticipate a bright future for it. According to research, the healthcare Blockchain market’s global growth is expected to reach $829 million by 2023, gaining a total CAGR of 72.8% from $53.9 million in 2018. Moreover, IDC suggests that by 2025 around 55% of all healthcare applications for commercial purposes will be Blockchain-based.

The scope of Blockchain in the healthcare sector is enormous. Blockchain has a significant impact on sharing PHIs, billing and medical research. The intrinsic features of Blockchain like immutability, decentralization and traceability provide the solutions for most complex situations like ensuring data security.

This article focuses on explaining how Blockchain works to manage patient’s sensitive data.

What is Blockchain in Healthcare?

Implementing Blockchain in healthcare enhances and transforms the way of handling patient’s and doctor’s data. The Blockchain’s scope is not limited to EHR management;

it brings transparency to healthcare supply chains
ensures the security of PHIs
decentralized nature makes the system hackproof
allows 24*7 data access
eliminates third-party interventions from any transactions

Blockchain can provide robust solutions for the majority of problems prevailing in the system due to the use of outdated technologies such as data breaches and counterfeit medicinal products.

Use cases of Blockchain in Healthcare

Patient record management and security

1.Patient record management and security
With continually increasing data breaches, security has become a pressing concern for the healthcare industry worldwide. Fortunately, Blockchain is the sole technology whose intrinsic property is to implement data security in the system. The distributed ledger technology is immutable. An unauthorized user can never alter any information on the ledger because of technology’s high-security features. Blockchain offers transparency to ensure clear visibility of the entire system and eliminate any scope of tampering with data. Hence, through Blockchain, healthcare providers and patients can safely access and share their sensitive data. Blockchain implements cryptographic encryption and complex protection codes to provide such high-level security and privacy.
The decentralized technology eliminates all the risks associated with data centralization. The data stored in centralized systems are highly prone to breaches, hacks and thefts. Blockchain is an excellent solution to this problem. It distributed information to all the participating nodes making it impossible to tamper. It works as described below:

The healthcare providers or institutions save patient’s data on the Blockchain leveraging Smart Contracts. A public key is generated that is required to access the data.
Whenever a healthcare provider accesses the patient’s information, he needs to provide the patient’s public key. After key verification, the provider can access the required data.
Blockchain doesn’t allow data access without the public key. Hence, patients need to share their public key with the providers whenever requested.

2. Healthcare supply chain management
The most significant problem that a healthcare supply chain faces is counterfeiting. Counterfeit drugs or other medicinal products are possible only because the supply chains are not transparent and allow a lot of tampering space.
Blockchain is an excellent solution to tackle pharmaceutical counterfeiting. It offers complete end-to-end transparency and immutability to the supply chains, eliminating counterfeiting and theft issues. Global healthcare organizations are benefitted from Blockchain as it facilitates tracing back the provenance of donated medical supplies across different countries while ensuring the integrity and authenticity of the pharmaceuticals.

3. Enhanced patient-provider communication
Miscommunication among healthcare workers or between patients and doctors can involve high costs and even jeopardize patients’ lives. Mostly, delayed and incorrect medical records become the potential reason for miscommunication. Blockchain technology resolves this problem effectively. Blockchain does not store records at a single point. It is decentralized and thus, every node in the network stores data. It makes data sharing fast and easy. Every bit of information on Blockchain is verified, authentic and time-stamped. It also assists healthcare providers in providing personalized treatment plans and conducting faster diagnoses.

4. Genomics
It is an interdisciplinary field of biology that deals with studying whole genomes of organisms, focusing on evolution, function, structure and editing of genomes. With the advent of Blockchain, the genomics industry has undergone drastic evolution intending to improve human health. Blockchain assists in the safe storage of massive amounts of genetic data points. Blockchain also assists scientists in conducting their research efficiently and store valuable information safely.
Blockchain also removes irrelevant costs and intermediaries involved in the process of conducting the genetic study. Many pharmaceuticals and biotechnology companies invest a hefty amount of money every year to acquire information from such intermediaries. Blockchain effectively eliminates mediators by providing a genetic database and incentivizing users to share their encrypted genetic data securely.

Conclusion

Blockchain has numerous use cases and with the growing popularity, the world may expect even more use cases in the upcoming future. Many health-tech experts and international healthcare organizations have already admitted that Blockchain is going to rule the future. With proper implementation and robust applications, Blockchain technology will be the savior for the healthcare industry worldwide.

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