A lot of people have heard about the Blockchain technologies in nowadays emerging trends. But most probably, they heard in terms of cryptocurrencies, which is bitcoin. However, apart from the cryptocurrencies, blockchain technologies have wider impacts in different industries. The blockchain is a new kind of technology which creates distributable data records shared via peer to peer to networks. This technology records all the digital events in a model that does not allow making a change or tampering the existing records. Because of this feature, data can be protected and handled very safely.
This security feature is needed in different industries and so huge financial organizations are showing interest towards investing money in the blockchain technology systems. With different programming apps and functionalities, companies are attracting customers through state of the art technologies in their work progress. Other than all the industries, the healthcare sector is also seeking benefits by incorporation of these technologies. The future potential is absolutely a great one for the healthcare industries; because of integration with these block chains. So ultimately, how does this blockchain technology can influence the healthcare industry?
Why for the healthcare industry?
At present in the medical sector, using comprehensive technologies they are developing a connected infrastructure of health systems. By implanting some tiny devices and wearable techs in patients’ bodies, it is able to get effective communication with one other to monitor, screen and notify the patient’s health conditions on a timely basis. After diagnosis, the monitored data can be kept to prevent further deterioration.
With the use of Blockchain, different devices can communicate easily which saves a lot of time as well as unnecessary costs. The data can be conveyed very easily through blockchain tokens as incentives and so the people can share their health data directly with the health institutions just by providing the tokens. By this way of approach, the patients’ health history can be easily examined and according to that further process of treatment are carried out. In this healthcare data storage, third-party tampering can be greatly avoided because of the decentralized and highly secured nature of the Blockchain.
So the ultimate advantage is the fast progress and efficient healthcare record systems. By effective wearable devices and medical techniques integrated with artificial intelligence all, the complex and laborious works can be broken down into easier tasks with accuracy. Hyperledger’s survey tells that 42.9% of healthcare institutions suggest that the interoperability of electronic health records helps in quick Blockchain implementation.
Ideal medical records
If the conventional generated medical records are written through the Blockchain, it will be a flawless and absolute proof in which it can’t tamper. The integrity of all the records can be protected. This same thing applies also to the clinical trials. Because of wrong trials of medicine, present methods lead to the death of individuals. By implementing blockchain technologies, negative impacts due to clinical errors can be largely reduced.
Consent management
Privacy and consent regulations can be easily maintained in the healthcare environment by using blockchain technologies. Data sharing can be easily done without errors and if any party is in need of exchanging medical data for a particular patient, their job is to just check out the Blockchain for needed permissions to access.
Micropayments
If a patient is following a regular treatment track by keeping their appointments in a regular interval of time to stay healthy, then their payment option can be easily rewarded by the Blockchain technologies. Likewise, patients can also be rewarded for the contribution of their data to the clinical trials and other researches.
 Data origin and Integrity
The patient number is in increasing phase every year and for the healthcare providers, managing all the patients’ data is becoming a tedious process on a regular basis. As the data volume increases above the limit, it is always harder one for all the hospitals and clinics to process and work with the stored data. Various data handled by medical organizations are Patient health information (PHI), Electronic health records, Insurance claims and other data from IoT devices and monitoring systems.
Blockchain enables secure information sharing techniques which allow health care providers and their entities to check and process with flawless data. Data integrity is the main advantage of using Blockchain. Once the data is recorded and encrypted, it will be stored forever. By using some kind of medical proofs, any user can verify with the data stamp without relying on the third parties. Some of the proofs are PHI integrity, unchangeable medical audits, the integrity of clinical research results, can reduce the audit expenses and ensuring the regulatory compliances.
To summarize, by incorporating Blockchain methods in the healthcare sector can enhance the progress of work and possibilities for errors are too low with this kind of approach. With tremendous potential, Blockchain is not going to rule only in the healthcare industry but also for other sectors in the future.