Top Blockchain Usage in Healthcare: A Comprehensive Guide

 

Description:

The implementation of blockchain in healthcare firms leads to more efficient medical processes, effective research, stronger security & enhanced patient outcomes. It has the potential to transform the entire healthcare landscape by creating new opportunities to overcome challenges.

Healthcare, perhaps, is the most crucial part of today’s society that’s evolving constantly to meet patients’ needs. In recent days, a buzzword known as blockchain is being heard around the healthcare industry. But is this only a hype or does it really make any change?

​Blockchain technology is a decentralized distributed ledger that has the ability to revolutionize healthcare firms, placing patients in a healthcare ecosystem & maximizing the interoperability, security & privacy of medical records. 

When it comes to patient data sharing, verification & storage, healthcare sectors face a lot of issues related to data breaches. As per the report, as of 2022, the total number of patient data breaches increased by 18% in comparison to 2021 to approx 59.8 million. 

Integrating blockchain technology in the healthcare industry is one of the best ways to overcome these challenges. In this blog, we will discuss the best blockchain usage in healthcare & it helps to revolutionize this industry significantly. Let’s get started.

What is blockchain technology in healthcare?

Well, healthcare is a complex industry where several stakeholders - from doctors & hospitals to insurance companies, are involved to provide patient care. Blockchain technology is significantly used to build a completely decentralized and secure platform to streamline patient care. It helps to store all blockchain medical records and gives patients complete control over their medical information. 

As per Precedence Research https://www.precedenceresearch.com/blockchain-in-healthcare-market, the market size of blockchain technology in healthcare was valued at 0.76 Billion USD by the end of 2022 & is expected to reach 14.25 Billion USD worldwide by 2032. 

 

This figure completely shows how medical facilities & hospitals are constantly tapping into blockchain development to improve their workflows. Blockchain also helps healthcare in the following ways:

1. Enhanced data security

2. 24/7 data monitoring

3. Improved clinical trials

4. Increased drug safety

5. Smart contracts

6. Claims & billing management

Top blockchain technology use cases in healthcare 

Blockchain brings new possibilities to identify & fix several challenges that modern healthcare industries are poorly facing like patient privacy, data security issues, interoperability, and so on. Implementing blockchain into health care not only streamlines overall operations but also effectively boosts security. From system efficiency to data monitoring, this technology has made massive changes in healthcare. 4 most prominent use cases of healthcare blockchain include:

1. Electronic Health Records (EHR)

A common issue that healthcare firms face is inadequate data on patients’ medical histories. Blockchain-powered EHR helps to solve this challenge by simplifying the systematized collection of electronically stored patient health info. 

EHR stands for Electronic Health Records that aims to enhance patient care, save lives and reduce costs. It helps to electronically store the patient's health-related data such as administrative & billing information, medical histories, vital signs, immunization dates, medications, progress notes, etc. Blockchain-based EHR helps healthcare providers effectively manage patient care by providing precise & detailed information about a patient's medical history. Other key perks of this application include:  

• A complete overview of medical information

• Good coordination of patient care

• High efficiency and cost savings

• Streamlined workflows

• Reducing errors

2. Drug traceability

Another excellent blockchain technology use case in healthcare is drug traceability. This is a method of tracking and monitoring drug items in the supply chain. However, many drug tracking systems still rely on a centralized database that can easily be hacked or tampered with. 

Fortunately, blockchain healthcare technology has the ability to recreate a decentralized drug traceability system by offering a well-established drug product movement record. This helps regulators instantly address and find fake items. Along with that, the blockchain-powered drug traceability system with IoT & AI can also be used to help in real-time drug product tracking.

Modern tech giants like KPMG, Merck, IBM & Walmart have already worked with blockchain solutions to smoothly track & monitor pharmaceutical drug products throughout the entire supply chain system. The main objective of this project was to thoroughly ensure that all drug products are genuine & they meet every quality standard.

3. Transparent supply chain 

Blockchain-based technology offers advanced tracking & end-to-end visibility of every medical product throughout the healthcare supply chain system - from the manufacturing stage to product distribution. This significantly improves transparency, builds trust, and enhances product visibility that is purchased via the supply chain. Three major perks of blockchain in the healthcare supply chain are: 

• Compliance: Pharmaceuticals & device manufacturers sometimes face several face reporting challenges. Fortunately, blockchain-based systems can aggregate all data into a system to make compliance streamlined. 

• Optimization: Once all data is preserved, companies can start taking benefits of AI technology to predict medical product demand and optimize the entire supply chain in a consistent manner. 

• Confidentiality: Blockchain-based technology enables users to track & monitor the provenance of packages, for example, wholesale, shipping, etc. It also effectively boosts privacy, transparency & trust.

4. IoT remote monitoring

Modern healthcare industries take advantage of the Internet of Things or IoT technology to remotely monitor their patients. Wearable sensors and other IoT-enabled devices can effectively collect a huge amount of medical information such as blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, and more. However, in terms of security, these IoT devices are not up-to-mark as they have a risk of data breaches. 

Fortunately, blockchain technology has solved the problem by providing a unique way to store & share data very securely. With a highly authentic and decentralized nature, the Blockchain IoT remote monitoring systems ensure that authorized users can only gain access to all sensitive medical-related information stored in blockchain networks.

What is an advantage of using blockchain technology in healthcare

Blockchain technology helps modern healthcare sectors in many ways - from making patient-centric EHR to data protection. Key advantages of blockchain for healthcare include: 

Blockchain benefits for healthcare institutes:

• Accelerating medical credentialing

• Transforms health records to decentralized systems that can not be hacked

• Enhances decision-making as it enables doctors from several locations to check the same medical record in real-time

Blockchain benefits for patients:

• Allows patients to manage their medical information

• Helps patients to engage in research & monetize data with zero intermediaries

• Helps to collect & preserve information from wearable devices securely

Blockchain benefits for pharmaceutics:

• Recruit more participants for a clinical trial

• Helps to address counterfeit drugs

• Supports auditable & reliable clinical trial documentation with immutable records

Blockchain benefits for insurance:

• Accelerate the confirmation obtaining method

• Reduces costs by removing intermediaries

• Open new opportunities for insurers to manage agreements with the help of smart contracts

Final words

Though there are certain limitations of blockchain, it aims to create several opportunities in healthcare industries to improve trustless collaboration, minimize complexity & increase the security of medical data. While this technology currently allows healthcare experts to maintain huge patient records, the benefits of blockchain technology are also important for resolving other major healthcare challenges. Want to know more about blockchain solutions for healthcare? Talk to our experts.