Blockchain and the healthcare industry: How to get started

Many of us in the technology field are reflecting on how we can help build a stronger, more resilient future for healthcare. As the industry focuses on digital transformation, there is a greater appetite to solve business challenges with emerging technologies, such as blockchain.

This is because, by definition, blockchain technology empowers organizations to digitize transactions through a secured, shared, and distributed ledger, improving efficiency and security.

Blockchain is the trigger that can help reinvent entire business models. A recent survey across industries found that 60 percent of blockchain early adopters are experimenting with a radically different business model or business process. This reinvention should include both back-end and consumer-facing processes. Organizations should not limit themselves to one or the other, but rather pursue both. For us in healthcare, the opportunities to improve care management, patient outcome, and patient engagement are significant. Blockchain can enable these dreams.

The value of blockchain is not its technical aspects, but how organizations can use it to solve business challenges

Blockchain in healthcare is all about removing the middleman. It’s about increasing the security of various transactional activities in the healthcare space while eliminating bureaucracy and manual inefficiencies, improving the quality of care, and democratizing patient data.

Blockchain is a decentralized list of digital records linked together by cryptography. Each record is known as a ‘block’. Every block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block i.e. a mathematical algorithm, a timestamp, and data of that transaction. Blockchain technology was developed to be a secure open ledger to record digital transactions, managed by a peer-to-peer network.

Advantages and issues with Blockchains in healthcare

• Key concerns with blockchain applications in healthcare include:
• Network infrastructure security at all levels
• Identity verification and authentication of all participants
• Uniform patterns of authorization to access electronic health information

Blockchains in healthcare can be envisaged in five primary areas:

• Managing electronic medical record (EMR) data
• Protection of healthcare data
• Personal health record data management
• Point-of-care genomics management
• Electronic health records data management

Blockchain can create a single system for stored, constantly updated, heath records for secure and rapid retrieval by authorized users. By avoiding miscommunication between different healthcare professionals involved in caring for the same patient, innumerable mistakes can be prevented, faster diagnosis and interventions become possible, and care can be personalized to each patient.

Some examples of blockchain technology frameworks that are in use at present on a relatively small scale include Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric.

With improved blockchain security and systems that promote synchronized transactions, blockchain services could be used to enhance the management of healthcare data.

For more information Connect with the expert team at https://bit.ly/2B32Az7