Can Blockchain solve the Healthcare Woes?

The healthcare sector has remained stagnant over the past few decades in terms of method of operation and eventually optimization & growth. With the increasing need for health care services, this sector needs a drastic turnover in order to be more organized, stable and patient-centric.

As of now, the utilization of technology seems to be the need of the hour. What and how? We’ll save that for a while. Let’s talk about the existing issues in the healthcare ecosystem.

Challenges

Currently, a myriad of federal rules and regulations have made the entire procedure of patient health management extremely lengthy and unorganized. Important data related to the patient’s health status, the supply of medicines, bill management etc. is not maintained in an organized manner and mostly remain scattered across multiple departments in outdated systems, thus leading to lack of accessibility by key individuals at crucial moments.

Due to the existence of multiple service providers throughout the ecosystem, integration of a patient’s data does not happen efficiently, thus leading to an unorganized management procedure, hassling both service providers and patients equally.

Research suggests that about 40% of healthcare data records consist of errors and misleading information. This can potentially be fatal for patients, when doctors refer to such false data while consultation.

Inefficient supply chains in the healthcare sector lead to drug counterfeiting and this amounts to a staggering $200 million, owing to the lack of trustable records and real-time tracking of interaction between manufacturers and retailers.

In the current system, patients do not have any control of data related to their health records, as everything is stored in a centralized repository owned by hospitals or third party service providers. This considerably increases the chances of data tampering, identity theft, financial scams etc.

All in all, the healthcare sector requires a technology-driven solution, which shall enable it to operate efficiently, transparently and cost-effectively, thus providing top-notch user-friendly services to patients.

Solutions

The blockchain technology, with its concept of immutable and distributed record keeping mechanism, has an optimum potential to ease up this process. With the implementation of this technology, the authority of data handling will no longer be restricted to specific entities, but every party involved, including the patients, will have equal control over relevant data, related to diagnosis history, health records, financial transaction history etc.

A cryptographically secure distributed ledger would help doctors, patients, researchers, and every permissioned entity within the network to easily access relevant data at any point in time. A common database accessible at multiple touch points would also enable smooth data sharing thus, deeming the entire process very transparent and clinical.

Blockchain technology, with the security it imparts by timestamping transactions and maintaining an immutable trail of records, can restrict the circulation of counterfeit drugs in the healthcare supply chain. Pharmaceutical companies would be able to able to register drugs on the blockchain network thus making those completely traceable right from the manufacturer to the end user. Transactions between multiple parties in the supply chain like the wholesaler, retailers etc. would be immutably recorded, thus ensuring the capability of participants to verify those and be sure about the originality of a particular element.

Financial frauds are prevalent in the healthcare sector. Implementation of blockchain technology will enable patients to pay in a cryptographically secure manner, with all transactions immutably recorded. Payment procedure automation will significantly reduce mishaps related to payments of large amounts.

Blockchain will also be able to mitigate risks involved with the management of patient data. With data recorded at multiple touch points across a distributed ledger and no single point of failure risks involved with hacking, misplacement etc. are considerably reduced.

Wrapping up

Studies suggest that about 56% of healthcare firms are actively considering to implement blockchain solutions by 2020. With growing acceptance and mass adoption, the technology’s true potential can be harnessed at even a larger scale.

Nikoin considers the application of blockchain in the healthcare sector, as a valuable use case of its Blockchain as a Service platform. Nikoin’s BaaS Platform is specifically designed for enterprises including healthcare firms, to easily deploy their operations through a simple plug and play architecture.

You can know more about the Nikoin Blockchain for Business solution by following its Telegram group at http://t.me/NikoinGlobal

Thanks for reading.