EphronTech

Imagining blockchain technology in healthcare?

In healthcare, critical information is scattered across multiple systems and sometimes, it may not be accessible when needed the most. Blockchain technology can solve many of the issues currently experienced by the healthcare industry, related to medical data (security, integrity and transparency). These issues plague even the top healthcare companies. In this blog, you will find out how the healthcare industry can leverage Blockchain technology solutions.

So, what is Blockchain?

Blockchain was developed in 2008 by Satoshi Nakamoto and it is simply a distributed and a write-once-read-only record that is shared in a peer-to-peer network.
Sounds simple, right? But here’s what makes blockchain different, the authorized users can neither delete nor alter any record and no transaction can take place unless validated by all users.

Major Healthcare Problem Today:

Currently, most medical institutions use outdated and inconvenient methods for handling medical data. Improper data handling impacts patient treatment and leads to loss of integrity and accuracy. This is where Blockchain and healthcare can come together to improve healthcare applications.

Yes, the technology can make the exchange of medical data more efficient, secure, and transparent across the health care sector as a whole. Digital medical records stored on a Blockchain could help parties in the health care sector put all the health data together. Thus, data of each patient, the prescriptions they’ve acquired, treatments completed, facilities used, and other information would always be up-to-date and digestible by anyone involved in the process.

“By using Blockchain technology in healthcare, treatment providers would always have a complete picture of any given patient’s medical record.”

Let’s have a brief idea on how Blockchain can resolve the issues in the healthcare industry.

Data Integrity

Patient medical data can vary from facility to facility. With an ongoing increase in patient numbers, healthcare providers have to manage more and more health data like patient health information, electronic health records, data collected from IoT devices, medical insurance claims regularly in a secured manner. When information is recorded and encrypted, it becomes impossible to change/remove.

Data Security

Data records stored in a Blockchain are immutable (unchangeable after they are input). This alleviates the risk of data theft or mishandling. Since health data wouldn’t be stored in a single location, if any given medical facility collapses due to an earthquake, fire, flood, asteroid strike, or any other natural disaster – health data would be safe.

Data Transparency

Blockchain is a transparent medium. Anyone, who is part of the network, can look into the blockchain and look at how each transaction takes place and whether all the relevant information is getting passed through or not. A transparent blockchain will help companies to enable close tracking of drugs to their point of origin and thus help eliminate falsified medication.

It is indeed worth noting that Blockchain technology can do wonders in the healthcare sector. However, getting an initial grip on utilizing the technology can be quite challenging, so, it makes sense to contact professionals for an expert consultation on what the future of Blockchain in healthcare could look like for you. For more information on how blockchain technology could help for your business, call 415.630.6692 or email to info@ephrontech.com.