Blockchain Technology: A Sure Shot Game Changer for Healthcare?

In this article, you will be looking forward to gaining knowledge on how blockchain technology could be a gamechanger for healthcare sector? Healthcare is one of the most complicated sectors in terms of data flows and the economy. It utilizes too many resources and much time to process, protect, and sustain a large amount of sensitive medical information due to its extremely complicated infrastructure built on both contemporary and obsolete technology. Furthermore, the sector is still limited to various regulations and relationships with third parties. Due to the lack of compatibility across multiple legacy systems, accessing essential medical information promptly remains a challenge.

Furthermore, medical data kept on-site or in the cloud is exclusively accessible to the specific healthcare practitioner. Even patients do not have complete access to their personal medical information, which is spread among several healthcare facilities’ systems. On the other hand, centralized authority over medical records might expose databases to cyber assaults.

This was a glimpse of the present healthcare landscape and the flaws associated with it. Now, let’s discuss how blockchain technology can help!

How Blockchain Technology Could Be a Gamechanger for Healthcare Sector?

Blockchain has emerged as a new term in the world of technology. The emergence of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has undoubtedly aided blockchain’s ascent to prominence.

Current medical data management systems are incapable of establishing a strong and dependable link between various healthcare stakeholders, posing unique challenges for all participants. Even moving a patient to another healthcare institution requires time and effort. Blockchain technology has the potential to enable patients to efficiently share, control, and access their data.

Blockchain Key Benefits

The following are some of the potential benefits that healthcare organizations may enjoy by using Blockchain technology in their business processes:

Better Data Security

The Blockchain has a decentralized system that makes it hackproof. All the commodity hardware in healthcare centers can be made to run on these decentralized systems. This will remove all man-made and natural calamities, resulting in effective security.

Real-time Monitoring & Data Access

With the help of IoT and wearables, blockchain for healthcare can be used to store and update useful patient data such as blood pressure and sugar levels in real-time. This enables doctors to monitor patients who are at high risk and to notify their relatives in the event of an emergency.

Cost-Effectiveness

Blockchain technology eliminates any third-party and intermediary systems that are typically engaged in data retrieval and transfer. In the absence of this structure, the healthcare system achieves high cost-effectiveness.

Applications of Blockchain Technology in the Healthcare Industry

Traceable Pharmacy Supply Chain

A complete digitized supply chain can aid in the development of predictive analytics for reducing health care fraud, waste, and abuse. Counterfeiting drugs is a major global issue. Blockchain can provide a chain-of-custody log, which records each stage of the supply chain at the individual product level, minimizing the possibility of fraud.

Through smart contracts, blockchain can improve the audit of prescription medicine delivery and ensure that all vendors remain compliant with the appropriate legislature. Moreover, such systems would be used to identify and examine out-of-pattern orders for control substances in real-time.

The Integrity of Medical Records

Blockchain technology can be used to verify the accuracy of all medical records. It is because whenever a medical record is created, it may be kept in the blockchain, which provides absolute proof as the record on the blockchain cannot be modified.

Smart Contracts

A smart contract embedded in the blockchain determines the terms under which information can be exchanged. For example, authorized employees such as healthcare practitioners, individual researchers, and research foundations rather than the general public or any malevolent third party, can access shared data.

When a researcher asks for data access, the smart contract immediately specifies the user’s legitimacy as well as the circumstances under which all participants can utilize the information.

Improved Medical Reconciliation

According to the American Journal of Managed Care, up to 77 percent of patients have experienced prescription reconciliation discrepancies as a result of a lack of effective data shared between EHR systems of primary health care physicians and pharmacies.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that some patients are prescribed dangerous medication combinations. Such gaps in patient safety not only hamper overall treatment quality but can also result in significant financial fines for the institutions that commit such errors.

The use of blockchain to coordinate prescriptions can result in major improvements to this problem. It will improve data coordination among all parties and automate the process of cross-checking various prescriptions.

Parting Words

Blockchain is the latest technology that is still in its early stage. Its massive success in the form of Bitcoin has undoubtedly raised the bar. In the future years, we may witness Blockchain impacting the healthcare business, resulting in an increase in healthcare app development leveraging blockchain technology. Finally, one thing is certain that Blockchain will make the healthcare sector more efficient and safe than ever before.