Blockchain and Healthcare

[Guest Bessalitskykh]

Over the course of recent years Blockchain technology has taken a variety of the globe’s industries by storm, at the same time building up a lot of hype, for healthcare included.

Blockchain technology works as a decentralized system that stores transactional records in interconnected blocks. This is where miners and cryptography come into play.

Blockchain technology in healthcare can positively effect the whole industry in different ways. 

Blockchain technology can revolutionize the following aspects of healthcare:

• Management of medical records (transmitting medical data to the blockchain will serve as proof of data security and stability. Blockchain can ensure the integrity of data as well
• Patient consent management (different states and countries have different consent regulations and privacy policies; blockchain can record the consent of every given patient and allow/forbid the use of certain data consequently)
• Management of micropayments (i.e. healthcare plan rewards)
• Elimination of insurance fraud (dishonest service providers and receivers will no longer be able to submit false claims to receive insurance benefits)
• Boost the creation of a single global medical information database (currently, medical institutions perform drug testing and clinical trials locally)
• Enable security in pharma supply chain (prescription drugs are consistently stolen and sold illegally, the losses of pharma industry reach $200 billion annually)

Both patients and service providers can benefit greatly from the intelligent incorporation of this technology. The most exciting opportunity this technology offers is probably the merging of patient’s data into one secure system that can be safely accessed by authorized people at all times and circumstances.

Nowadays the majority of health care institutions use outdated and inconvenient methods for dealing with medical data. They are various e-health records, prescription drug data, insurance information, patient medical data. Such data handling influences patient treatment and the speed of it. The whole situation is getting worse because most medical facilities in the health care sector have their own methods for storing and accessing medical data.

Problems in getting proper patient data can sometimes even mean the difference between life and death. These days, no universal method for storing data exists and there are no appropriate standards set in place. Thus, Blockchain and healthcare can come together to improve healthcare applications.

Follow this article https://mlsdev.com/blog/blockchain-and-healthcare-use-cases-today-and-in-the-future to find out more about how Blockchain can benefit healthcare, and why it matters.