Blockchain technology will help to safeguard data integrity in the healthcare sector
Whether you’re exposed to the technicality of blockchain technology or not, you have the thirst of implementing something new in your healthcare industry, which can build trusted patient care, data integrity.
Hats off to the “Wow” idea which you carry on your mind to improve the lifespan of every individual in the world with a sophisticated, healthy lifestyle!
Blockchain is a decentralized, shared public/private/hybrid digital ledger which is used to maintain records across the authorized network users.
In real-time example, it can be compared with land ledgers maintained by governments.
Benefits of blockchain technology in healthcare
Blockchain technology can pave the way for the pack of solutions to the existing healthcare sector problems.
Major problems of the health industry are data interoperability, patient identifier, maintenance of medical records, the appropriate supply chain for drugs and much more.
Now let’s just look into the top 3 areas at which blockchain can uplift the healthcare industry!
Data integrity of patients
Even though there is advanced technology in medical sciences, no patient record is uniquely identified. Every record is maintained as like fiat methods!
Instead of paper records, the entire healthcare records can be maintained through blockchain technology which will vanish the problems of unique patient identifier and decentralization of patient records.
According to statistics, due to insufficient unique patient identifier techniques, Electronic Health Records are viable to cause scams in every patient care.
Blockchain can identify the patient with its feature of hash value and crypto algorithms!
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As a healthcare professional, you may think that patient records must be private!
Blockchain professionals can provide you with customized solutions with a private, public and hybrid variety of blockchain technologies according to the requirements of the industry!
Yes! For example, drug usage and harms can be shared in the public network whereas drug compositions, specifications, and much more information can be shared to health professionals alone. Depending upon the needs of health sectors, blockchain can provide great solutions!
Every sister concern of the healthcare industry, however, requires the patient record to serve them better. Pharmacists, radiologists, lab technicians, and other healthcare professionals require patient records from physicians.
If the patient records are maintained on the decentralized platform within accessible users, then it can make the jobs of pharmacists, technicians job easier.
Also, patients can easily identify whether the drugs provided are prescribed and recommended by the physicians, medical associations.
Do you think data integrity can only help patient care? It can do much more for you professionals!
Research scholars and clinical trials data integrity
Data integrity for a group of patients can enable researchers, scholars to get in touch with treatment plans or they can provide solutions or clinical drugs according to their history of records.
Patients can easily get the solutions in the network if some drug has been discovered or proved as a curative for that disease.
In many countries, medical scams out there have been due to clinical trials. The most shocking info is that around 40 per cent of clinical trials are uninformed to the patients. So, these flaws can vanish if the healthcare industry is brought under one roof!
Also Read: Fully integrating AI and healthcare is closer than you think
Proper standards, rules & regulations can be maintained when the industry is on the decentralized platform!
Supply chain traceability transparency
In the medical sector, many scams are due to breakage of the supply chain of medicines, drugs and other products.
Implementation of blockchain will increase trust among people and can help manufacturers track their stock info available in the retail market.
If the expiry dates of medicines, drugs reaches, then pharma regulators can deploy those harmful medicines into wastes, so that patients are not served with these medicines.
Pharma manufacturers can track the supply chain through blockchain technology easily and can ensure people, retailers to buy the right drugs.
As the supply chain can be entirely managed by manufacturers, the inter costs can be completely diminished.
The implementation of blockchain can defeat the counterfeit, fraudulent activities in the drug supply chain to a larger extent in the healthcare sector.
Due to transparency among the decentralized network users in blockchain, scams, costs for medical care can be easily monitored to regulate the entire health care industry!
So, we can improvise the better healthcare environment for professionals, patients in the near future through blockchain!
How the blockchain implementation can impact the healthcare sector
Impacts of blockchain in healthcare
Blockchain technology has boomed the growth of cryptocurrencies to a larger extent. But, however, in healthcare or other industries, we don’t find any implementations so far.
Also Read: How augmented reality will become the hero of the healthcare industry
A recap on the impacts of blockchain implementation in the healthcare industry!
- Data storage and maintenance can be a risky operation while involving healthcare. Blockchain can overcome the data interoperability, but while considering huge data storage in a single block, it’s not an easy-breezy job. Medical records can be huge and storage space must also be increased in blockchain accordingly!
- No estimation on actual costs for implementing the blockchain in the healthcare sector.
- No Working model since the evolution of an idea in healthcare with blockchain technology in supply chain or any other applications.
Implementation of blockchain technology in healthcare can bring an uplift to the entire healthcare industry as well as people’s healthy lifestyle. But, the kick-starting of incorporating blockchain in the healthcare sector can be as challenging as riding in roller-coaster!
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Image Credit: Luis Mendelez
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