How Blockchain Technology Will Transform the Healthcare Sector
By: Eshan Samaranayake
Tags: Data Science, Technology, Health, Blockchain, Healthcare

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Blockchain technology is already revolutionizing the healthcare sector.

The technology places the patient at the centre of the healthcare ecosystem and increases the security, privacy, and interoperability of health data. Blockchain technology could provide a new model for health information exchanges by making electronic medical records more secure. Blockchain technology shows a promising future to the healthcare industry with secure data exchange, trackable billing and payments, and much more.

What is Blockchain technology?

Blockchain technology refers to a distributed database enclosing a history of transactions and records. When requested for a transaction, it asks all the peer-to-peer networks for validating the transaction. Participants in the network govern and agree by consensus on the updates to the records in the ledger. No central authority or third-party mediators, such as a financial institution or clearinghouse, is involved. Every record in the distributed ledger has a timestamp and unique cryptographic signature, thus making the ledger an auditable, immutable history of all transactions in the network.

1. Blockchain provides Better Medical Research

Presently, there’s no method by which a doctor could access the data collected by clinical trials by a healthcare practitioner in another part of the world. This is where blockchain can help. Blockchain improves structured protocols and makes sure that there is informed consent by the trial participants in this area. Smart contracts and timestamps are in place that allows this to happen.

With blockchain technology, the healthcare centres can store their collected data and records into a nationwide distributed ledger. This information can be made accessible to other doctors through a blockchain private key. By this information exchange process, they can learn from the trials made by other doctors and can drive better medical processes to deal with a critical medical condition.

2. Blockchain facilitates better patient data exchange and management

Electronic health records can be transferred to a doctor with ease and be collected through IoT devices which can be made compatible with a specific blockchain. Blockchain can provide an easily-authenticated, secure platform for the integration of data that is contained within wearables such as fitness, health, or activity tracker devices.

The physicians can store patients records in secure ledgers which are made available to the patients via a blockchain private key. The patients can access and share their reports with other healthcare organizations. This enables them to provide better solutions based on the patient’s medical history.

3. Blockchain provides secure drug supply

Blockchain technology is also making an effective involvement in the supply chain management industry. From developing a drug to delivering it to patients, blockchain can integrate the supply chain process and lower down the risk of fraud through smart contracts, transfer of assets and distributed ledgers. Due to the strict surveillance, all blockchain transactions follows, they are permanent and timestamped. It follows that if you use blockchain, fraudulent drugs, and drug transactions are easy to identify and stop.

4. Blockchain provides seamless billing and payments tracking

With the help of blockchain-based applications and solutions, all the tests, reports, billing and payments can be tracked in real-time. As a result, there will be lesser risk of fraudulent cases; boosting trust between patients and medical professionals. Moreover, blockchain technology can also help the patients understand the agreements and payments clearly and stay away from threats. With blockchain technology in place, claim denials can be minimized. Underpayments can be quickly reported, and human errors and time delays are reduced as well.

Blockchain can streamline many of these processes and lessen all kinds of payment concerns. Business operations and daily revenue cycles for medical facilities can be optimized.

5. Blockchain will help reduce the cost of healthcare

According to Bisresearch, the adoption of blockchain in the healthcare industry is estimated to save up to $100 billion yearly by 2025. By eliminating avoidable third-party clients, counterfeit pharmaceutical products and malicious software, the industry would take a tremendous drift toward complete transparency and accountability, and ultimately save money for both patients and healthcare companies.

While the initial cost of digitizing and transferring health information in blocks can be slightly high, the technology will provide companies with great value in the long run.