Managing Patient Consent Through Blockchain
By Elena Derymova on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
Most serious medical procedure requires the patient’s consent, be it medical or cosmetic. However, all too often records of consent are stored in plain paperwork, which can easily be lost, damaged, or falsified. That could lead to problems later on, including lawsuits and the need to get consent all over again. Thankfully, there is a tool that can help with patient consent management — blockchain.
Benefits for Healthcare Businesses
Blockchain will be a great tool for cutting costs and delivering benefits in any modern hospital. It’s going to make daily processes more efficient as well as reduce the operational expenses.
First and foremost, the decentralization aspect of blockchain makes it much less likely that your records of consent will be lost. The digitally stored records are much more secure than physical ones.
By keeping the consent records decentralized, you can ensure that they’re accessible at any point and from anywhere. That way you can always reliably prove that consent for the operation has been given.
Moreover, it means you can save time if the patient must be transferred between facilities. Instead of trying to find the right paperwork to confirm that further operations can be done or, even worse, trying to get consent again, you can just look up the records.
This connects institutions without any extra effort and streamlines patient processing. Moreover, consent through blockchain means you will always have accurate data on when consent was received.
Patient-Side Benefits
Instead of simply signing a pre-written contract, providing a blanket agreement to all terms, the patient can choose flexibly what they agree to. For example, they might forbid data from their experience to be shared.
Alternatively, the patient can opt-in for extra services while not agreeing to many others. This could lower the cost of their hospital stay and improve their overall experience. That issue is particularly topical for US-based clinics and their patients.
Similarly, patients will be happy with the removal of third parties. Instead of the contract being handled by the legal department, the patient can now be presented with a simple form on their own smartphone. It’s easier, automated, and much faster.
