Applications of Blockchain in the Healthcare Industry
Blockchain has gained a lot of traction, yet along with different advancements, such as data analytics, IoMT, and 5G. It can help healthcare improve its conventional way to deal with health information, taking care of its transparency and efficiency.
The insights on blockchain in healthcare anticipate a bright future for this innovation. As indicated by Research and Markets, the worldwide blockchain innovation market in the healthcare business is required to cross $500 million by 2022, developing at a CAGR of 61.4% somewhere in the range of 2018 and 2022. Simultaneously, IDC recommends that 55% of all healthcare applications will have utilized blockchain for business purposes by 2025.
As blockchain is picking up prevalence, healthcare institutes are working with blockchain consultants to encourage the selection of the technology in healthcare ventures.
Capabilities of Blockchain in Healthcare
Nowadays, the healthcare sector is confronting a few difficulties. One of the instances is a human mistake, which has been the third driving reason for death in the US, as CNBC indicates. Different problems incorporate security of patient health records, lack of transparency in the drug production supply chain network, absence of interoperability between databases holding health records, and dispersity of healthcare-related data, be it patients’ clinical history or clinical staff qualifications. The current circumstance presents challenges in sharing and getting to health information timely.
Blockchain innovation can be a response to these healthcare challenges. It will significantly improve and possibly reform how health information is dealt with and leveraged by care providers and patients.
Here are some of the blockchain healthcare use cases:
Smart Contracts in Health Insurance
Smart contracts can improve the conventional insurance framework to a great extent and dispose of every single superfluous go-between. Suppose a patient purchases their clinical insurance policy using smart contracts. In that case, the policy details will be saved in the patient’s profile on the blockchain platform and be less inclined to hacking than when kept in a conventional information base.
It will also remove the need to document tedious insurance claims. When a patient goes through a process covered by insurance, the smart contract will trigger automatically and the cash will be moved from the payer to the hospital.
Drug Traceability
The counterfeit drug is one of the major issues in the pharmaceutical sector. They cause unexpected issues and can even bring about death. Furthermore, they represent significant financial misfortune in the pharmaceutical business. As per The Financial Times, 10% to 30% of all drugs available in the market are fake.
Blockchain is an ideal solution to ensure drug authenticity, as it enables tracking of each medication to its origins. Blockchain can be utilized to embody data about the medication at each phase of its lifecycle, (for example, creation, distribution, and so forth) Each block inside the blockchain containing drug data will have a hash connected to another block, and each block will contain a timestamp that can’t be modified.
Facilitating clinical trials and research
Blockchain can help in overcoming the issue of misrepresentation or fraud in clinical preliminaries. Fraud includes modifying data to cover the real impact of tested drugs or some other medicines.
To guarantee the security and transparency of clinical preliminaries, researchers can depend on the blockchain. There, all documents prepared for clinical trials can be time-stamped and recorded safely. Those documents comprise research design, project proposals, blood tests, surveys and consent of the involved parties.
Conclusion
There are some high-potential use cases of blockchain in healthcare either in their pilot stages or launched to the market effectively. Notwithstanding, before planning, it is essential to comprehend your organization’s necessities when implementing blockchain in healthcare.
I’m Kelly Hood! I blog about tech, how to use it, and what you should know. I love spending time with my family and sharing stories of the day with them.
