How Blockchain Technology Help in Healthcare?

I think healthcare still have lots of challenges and regulations, standards need to be in place, however, blockchain can do a lot.

Decentralization of Patient Data

Sharing patient data between doctor’s offices can be a tricky process — especially if a patient needs to see multiple specialists or is involved with multiple private practices. Using the blockchain, a decentralized system which is centered on the patient instead of the data holder, creates a shared database of patient data. There are dozens of systems that manage electronic health records (EHRs), all centralized per company.

For example, Boston’s 4.5 million residents have to contend with 26 different systems, all using different languages. A blockchain record would only be one system, with one language, that could be easily shared across a patient’s healthcare providers. Smart contracts ensure HIPAA privacy laws are not violated.

Violating HIPAA comes with significant fines, but as blockchains are essentially impenetrable, healthcare data breaches could just be a worry of the past.

Companies like BurstIQ and Health Linkages are creating databases for just this purpose. Health Linkages provides anonymous patient data to doctors, while BurstIQ is using machine learning to process the data.

Clinical Trials

As mentioned, smart contracts manage permissions for doctors to edit information in a patient’s record. This allows for only those doctors who are involved in the patient’s care to have access, while other doctors can still see the records.

This has implications for not just patient care, but clinical trials as well In 2017. Forbes estimated that up to 50 percent of clinical trials went unreported, and up to 90 percent of trials on ClinicalTrials.gov had no results.

The blockchain, however, can store these results, with only certain doctors having permission to edit, but any interested doctor able to see the information of the trial. The creates an easy way to share data across researchers. The information gained from a trial could be stored in the blockchain, eliminating the need to report elsewhere. Interested doctors can simply look up the information in the blockchain.

Drug Traceability

With transaction data that is time-stamped and can only be edited by those with explicit permission, tracing drugs will prove much easier, cutting down on counterfeiting. In short, as every transaction from the manufacturer down is recorded, finding where the drugs went off the proverbial trail is fairly easy, and thus someone can be held accountable.

Between 10 and 30 percent of drugs in developing countries are fake, and fake drugs cost U.S. businesses $200 billion annually. Given access to the transactions of a blockchain, the drug manufacturer can track where the drug goes. The manufacturer might not sell to whichever organization improperly used or sold the drugs. This will help eliminate counterfeit drugs, which may not have the same effects as the original drug, and could be dangerous to users.

The blockchain is already well on its way to revolutionizing the healthcare industry. While the major implications of its adoption are in how patient data is shared and how patients pay for medical care, it reaches as far as securing drug transactions and protecting data against breaches. Clinical trial information will be far easier to share, with results given to doctors where otherwise the results might be lost entirely, negating any usefulness of the trial. Satoshi Nakamoto may have initially conceived what we now call the blockchain as a way of verifying digital currency transactions, but the applications are perfect for use in healthcare.