Blockchain to Solve the Healthcare Sector Woes
Healthcare Sector is a data intensive industry from clinical tests, patient treatment, drugs supply chains to health records, everything is presently being managed through the traditional computer and paperwork system. Healthcare sector has remained stagnant over the past few decades in terms of method of operation and eventually optimization and growth. With the increasing need for healthcare services, this sector needs a drastic turnover in order to be more organized, stable and patient-centric.
As of now, utilization of technology seems to be the need of the hour and there has been is lot of impetus in digital transformation in last couple of years. What and how? We’ll save that for a while. Initially, Discussing about the existing challenges in the healthcare ecosystem.
Digital transformation in healthcare sector is seeing paradigm change in the treatment techniques, research and clinical trials. However, healthcare industry still relies on paperwork’s for processes which causes a lack of integrity, transparency, and quality of drugs supply chain. Implementing Blockchain into the healthcare system would rejuvenates the sector with transparency, legitimacy, standardization, data integrity, and efficiency and privacy. Patients can effectively manage their medical history with integrity in the digital ledgers and access them whenever, wherever required by preserving privacy. Medical practitioners and patients can connect with each other over the decentralized network in case of emergency for medical consultation without any delay. Blockchain based decentralized and transparent healthcare ecosystem can standardize treatment techniques and charges to the entities in the network.
Blockchain healthcare ecosystem would be very effective when it comes to efficient drug supply chain, accessibility to research data, emergency transplantation, clinical trials, demographic data, and preventing a pandemic. In addition, blockchain healthcare solutions would positively impact in preventing clinical errors and expensive surgeries. Largely speaking, blockchain incorporation in healthcare ecosystem would enrich legitimacy, quality standards, integrity, transparency, and cost effectiveness.
Challenges in Healthcare Industry
Currently, numerous rules and regulations have made the entire procedure of patient health management extremely lengthy and unorganized. Some of the challenges faced in the healthcare sector are:
1. Multiple Stakeholders. Important data related to patient’s health status, supply of medicines, bill management etc. is not maintained in an organized manner and mostly remain scattered across multiple departments in outdated systems, thus, leading to lack of accessibility by key individuals at crucial moments.
2. Huge Data. Due to the existence of multiple service providers throughout the ecosystem, integration of a patient’s data does not happen efficiently, thus, leading to an unorganized management procedure, hassling both service providers and patients equally. Research suggests that about 40% of healthcare data records contain errors and misleading information. This can potentially be fatal for patients, when doctors refer to such false data while consultation.
3. Inefficient supply chains in the healthcare sector leads to drug counterfeiting and this amounts are really huge loss in millions of dollars, owing to the lack of trustable records and real-time tracking of interaction between manufacturers and retailers.
4. Drug Traceability. Drug counterfeiting is one of the most serious problem in the pharmaceutical industry. The problem with fake drugs is that they are very different from the original products in a quantitative and qualitative way, which might not have the exact ingredients as required. This is always a threat to the patient and doesn’t treat the disease for what it is actually supposed to do.
5. Patient Data Management. Healthcare sector has numerous patients having different diseases requiring very specialized treatments. It entails that each patient’s history must be maintained and recorded properly in order to treat the patient with correct medication. Similarly, sharing these records amongst the medical community is another challenge as it is always expensive, more time consuming and insecure.
6. Data Security in Clinical Trials. Clinical trials are designed to test efficacy of specific medicines and vaccines to validate or invalidate hypothesis. Information regarding statistics, test results, quality reports, etc that are recorded during the clinical trials can be manipulated and it is possible to change the outcome or manipulate the result data easily. This kind of data tempering could damage the brand of an organization amongst regulatory agencies or patients.
In the current system, patients do not have any control of data related to their health records, as everything is stored in a centralized repository owned by hospitals or third party service providers. This considerably increases the chances of data tampering, identity theft, financial scams etc.
Applications of Blockchain Technology in Healthcare
Blockchain Technology, with its concept of immutable and distributed record keeping mechanism, has an optimum potential to ease up this process. With the implementation of blockchain technology, the authority of data handling will no longer be restricted to specific entities, but to every party involved, including the patients, will have equal control over relevant data, related to diagnosis history, health records, financial transaction history etc.
All in all, the healthcare sector requires a technology-driven solution, which shall enable it to operate efficiently, transparently and cost-effectively, thus providing top-notch user-friendly services to patients.
1. Smart Contracts. These are digital contracts that can verify, facilitate and enforce the rule. Unique smart contracts in an organization develops a consistent rule that allow multiple organizations to access a patient’s record. A cryptographically secure distributed ledger would help doctors, patients, researchers, and every permissioned entity within the network to easily access relevant data at any point in time. A common database accessible at multiple touch points would also enable smooth data sharing thus, deeming the entire process very transparent and clinical.
2. Integrity of Records. As the information recorded in the blockchain is immutable, there is no possibility for error in the records. You can ensure that the data is accurate and it is a huge advantage for the organization to give proper treatment to cure a patient.
3. Supply Chain Management. Drugs are transported from the manufacturing centres to the wholesale distributors and retailers and Blockchain can be used to track the drugs in transit and people involved in process to get rid of fake drugs and find the source of counterfeiting. Blockchain Technology with the security it imparts by timestamping transactions and maintaining an immutable trail of records, can restrict the circulation of counterfeit drugs in the healthcare supply chain. Pharmaceutical companies would be able to able to register drugs on the blockchain network, thus, making those completely traceable right from the manufacturer to the end user. Transactions between multiple parties in the supply chain like the wholesaler, retailers etc. would be immutably recorded, thus ensuring the capability of participants to verify those and be sure about the originality of a particular element.
4. Mitigating Financial Frauds. Financial frauds are prevalent in the healthcare sector. Implementation of blockchain technology will enable patients to pay in a cryptographically secure manner, with all transactions immutably recorded. Payment procedure automation will significantly reduce mishaps related to payments of large amounts.
5. New Business Model. This paradigm shift would entail to be a new business model when blockchain gets integrated with healthcare operations. Doctors, nurse and other healthcare professionals can access the patient’s data anytime and get a real-time update on the health condition and monitor the ongoing treatment.
Blockchain will also be able to mitigate risks involved with the management of patient data. With data recorded at multiple touch points across a distributed ledger and no single point of failure risks involved with hacking, misplacement etc. are considerably reduced.
Benefits of Blockchain in Healthcare
Blockchain technology is a disruptive technology which gives pro-level solutions to various challenges of diverse industries. Blockchain has also brought plenty of benefits to the healthcare sector. Using blockchain technology, precise treatment can be given to the patient s at the right time as the data is securely recorded and shared in a transparent network. Blockchain is the right solution for healthcare organization with benefits which as under:
1. Transparency in Processes. Healthcare services would be more appropriate, transparent and open in terms of the medical treatment techniques, drug quality, charges incurred and other processes.
2. Data Security. With Blockchain in place, patients themselves can efficiently manage their medical history with integrity, accessibility, conscious data sharing, and high-security.
3. Interoperability. Healthcare sector can efficiently manage the third party organizations such as insurance, pharmaceuticals, diagnosis, transportation, etc., with integrity under a single-network.
4. Dispute-Free. One major advantage would be that healthcare sector would be positioned with consensus guidelines, and hence there would be no disputes in clinical trials, charges, drug quality, transplantation.
5. Instant Accessibility. Blockchain based Applications would assist patients to leverage the strength of blockchain and would be able schedule their appointments, coordinate emergency treatments, and specialized physicians with their medical data stored in decentralised ledgers anywhere at any time without any delay.
Blockchain infrastructure and applications in healthcare sector can completely change the viewpoint among stakeholders. Transparency healthcare processes using Blockchain can be a boon to all the stakeholders in the next generation healthcare system.
Healthcare system’s decentralized infrastructure with cryptographic encryption would secure the patient data with authorized accessibility and would prevent from potential cyber-attacks. The healthcare sector would thrive with transparency, trustworthiness, traceability, equality in ailments, quality drugs, efficient practitioners and diagnosis, and much more positive features with blockchain solutions.
