How is Blockchain Technology Transforming the Healthcare System?
Today, the global healthcare industry is facing several challenges. From ensuring secure data sharing to managing medical billings, researchers and clinical trials are under high pressure to control the rising costs and constantly provide quality care systems to patients.
In this blog, we will explore how can the capabilities of blockchain technology change the system of healthcare.
What is blockchain technology?
Blockchain is the technology that enabled the transactions of Bitcoin and became popular in 2009. It also acts as a centralized bank managing all types of financial transactions owing to its key potential to gather and store data that cannot be altered or compromised.
The need for high security of collected data and transparency in every sector is the reason behind the popularity of this technology in industries that are dependable on transactions, be it goods supply, sensitive information, or monetary.
Today, the use of blockchain technology is expanding from the finance and banking sectors to the healthcare industry. With its high capabilities, blockchain technology is changing the healthcare industry and providing patients with privacy, interoperability, and security of the data related to their health.
As per BIS Research, the global blockchain in the healthcare market is expected to grow and touch $5.61 billion by 2025.
Healthcare Applications:
Blockchain technology in healthcare can be used mainly across five areas:
- Protection of electronic medical record (EMR) data
- Protection of medical data
- Management of personal health data
- Management of genomic data
- Management of electronic data related to patient health
Applications of Blockchain Technology in the Healthcare Industry:
- Research
At present, EMR allows automated updating and sharing of healthcare data for particular patients with some healthcare organizations. However, it can be extended to even more organizations with the help of blockchain technology.
This will help facilitate easy accessibility to a wider range of patient data for researchers and organizations. The availability of massive data would promote high clinical research, safe event reporting, proper health, and faster identification of patients.
- Cheaper, Faster, and Better Patient Healthcare
Blockchain technology can help create a single system for storing and constantly updating medical records to ensure rapid and secure use by authorized personnel. With less miscommunication between several healthcare experts involved in the treatment of a single patient, several mistakes can be avoided with better interventions and faster diagnosis.
- Interoperable Electronic Medical Records
Blockchain technology can help to provide a single layer of transactions where healthcare companies can share and submit data through one system by keeping set standards for the data on the blockchain with private links for every stored information, such as radiographic and more. The use of uniform authorization and smart contract protocols can help maintain seamless connectivity in healthcare records.
- Data Security
Over the last few years, there has been a high number of data breaches of healthcare records that took place across several organizations. However, with the adoption of blockchain in healthcare, such data records can be protected in a better way. Here, each individual gets a private password that can only be unlocked in case of necessity. Moreover, hacking can also be controlled to some extent Since hackers will have to attack every individual patient for getting their personal information. Therefore, blockchain can help to provide an unchangeable audit trail of medical information.
Challenges in the Adoption of Blockchain Technology in the Healthcare Industry:
Despite several advantages of blockchain technology, there are many challenges in implementing blockchain technology completely in healthcare. Following are some of the challenges:
- Using blockchain technology in a healthcare organization requires permission. Given the highly sensitive data of the patients, one needs to think and consider the best blockchain type that fits perfectly for the specific operation. Implementing blockchain technology in the existing healthcare system needs assistance from people that are trained experts in IT in blockchain for handling the security challenges in the healthcare systems.
- Blockchain technology offers inbuilt protection against several cyber attacks. However, it is still vulnerable to different types of online attacks. Thus, it has become highly important for information security to keep intensive attention while using this technology in the healthcare sector.
- Storing such high amounts of data is also one of the major challenges. Due to the high private medical data, the overall functionality of the blockchain technology could be impacted. The network slowdown in the blockchain due to the storage of large amounts of data is one of the obstacles to the adoption of this technology in healthcare. Determining a way to store such large data without getting any negative impact on the blockchain network is the area that still requires to be evaluated.
Blockchain technology bags endless opportunities for transforming the healthcare industry, but it is not yet completely matured to beadopted. Several economic, organizational, and technical challenges need to be addressed before the adoption of blockchain technology by every healthcare system.
Conclusion:
Blockchain technology has immense capabilities for transforming the whole healthcare industry. It offers several effective applications like safe patient care, better transparency regarding the storage of the patient’s data, and many more.The technology has started to witness gradual adoption across the healthcare sector. However, the challenges associated with its adoption need to be addressed on priority so as to ensure the seamless adoption and integration of blockchain across the healthcare sector.
