Tag: blockchain

Mar 28
2018

Could Blockchain Be the Answer to Electronic Health Record?

Guest post by Fizzah Iqbal, content writer, Incubasys.

After a number of initial coin offerings being launched in the cryptocurrency market, blockchain development companies plan to introduce blockchain technology to the health records (EHR) industry. The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a digitised version of patient’s medical history maintained by their doctors over a period of time. It includes information on demographics, diagnosis, vital signs, past medical history, progress over time, lab tests and more.

Owing to the de-centralised nature of blockchain system, it securely stores health records and maintains a single version of the truth that cannot be tampered with. This is of significant importance to different medical organisations and individuals like doctors, hospitals, labs, and insurers who can request permission to access a certain patient’s record from the blockchain without involving an intermediary. It offers two-way benefits; first, doctors and medical organisations get access to patients’ details and history without losing any precious time waiting for approvals from any intermediary and provide better patient care based on more accurate data, second, patients have more control over who sees their data.

The Challenge?

The biggest challenge faced by healthcare systems throughout the world is how to share medical data with known and unknown parties for different reasons without violating patients’ rights and ensuring data security. Creating a trusted environment for decision-making regarding EHRs is challenging for medical community since each EHR stores data using different workflows which makes tracking data recording rather ambiguous. The growing focus on care coordination and EHR access across the care continuum has raised questions about ways to ensure that multiple providers can view, edit and share patient’s data without violating their rights and privacy in any way.

It’s not only about the problem of data sharing logistics in HER instead every solution that requires serious contemplation in a national healthcare system needs to put patient’s privacy and rights first in their list of priorities. And although laws have made health care data more accessible, vast majority of hospitals and doctors still cannot share data safely and securely. The time has arrived where solutions are needed in which patients themselves control whom to share their data with and where to remain pseudonymous.

The Solution?

Healthcare data is inherently sensitive in nature. Besides that the constant challenges of interoperability, patient record matching, and health information exchange have created opportunities for blockchain development companies to come up with a blockchain-based solution.

Once a blockchain solution is deployed to manage EHRs, it becomes a unified and common backbone for digital health. The biggest advantage of using this backbone is that each hospital or care provider no longer needs a specific version of databases or software to access patient data. Any information presented by EHR on the distributed ledger of a permissioned blockchain would be perfectly reconciled community-wide with the assured integrity throughout without any human intervention.

The use of blockchain technology to manage EHRs reduces the time it takes any medical representative to access patient’s information, enhance system interoperability and improve data quality. It also enables a reduction in overhead costs especially for development and maintenance of legacy health record systems. What blockchain does for everyone in healthcare system is that instead of relying on a designated intermediary for information exchange the de-centralised nature of blockchain allows any approved party to join in and either access information, share or exchange without the need to build data exchange channels between certain organisations.

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Jan 16
2018

We’ve Got An Adherence Problem: What Are We Doing About It?

By Dr. Tal Rapke, founder, ScalaMed.

According to a 2003 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) into medication adherence, about 50 percent of patients with chronic illness don’t take their medications as prescribed. This poor adherence to medication leads to wastage, disease progression, increased morbidity and death, increased burden on medical resources, and is estimated to cost approximately $100 billion per year.

A 2012 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine recorded a lack of adherence to taking medication as the cause of almost 125,000 deaths in the US per year. The research found that 10 percent of admittances to hospital were as a consequence of non-adherence to prescribed medication, resulting in an estimated annual cost to the healthcare system of between $100 billion an $289 billion.

Of course, it can be easy to write this issue off as the patient’s responsibility, and naturally they have a huge role to play in solving this issue. There are, however, myriad factors that contribute to non-adherence of the 4.45 billion prescriptions written in the US each year.

The medication-taking experience is a complex interaction that involves patient, physician and the broader healthcare system, and all of these protagonists need to be functioning together correctly if we are to reach a state where avoidable medical treatment is minimized.

Given that increased adherence would not only greatly improve patient outcomes, but also save the healthcare sector billions of dollars, addressing this pervasive issue should be a priority for the industry. But what really causes it, and how can we improve our approach?

The patient
From the patient’s perspective, there are a number of factors that can contribute to the non-adherence of prescribed medication. One overarching theme for patients is patient activation and empowerment. The healthcare system isn’t constructed to ensure patients take on the role in self-management expected of them. Our paternalistic healthcare system can often make patients feel disempowered, and excluded from care decisions.

A poor understanding of both their condition and the medication that has been prescribed can lead to a lack of ownership of and accountability for the management of their condition. In numerous reports, patients are overly concerned about side effects, lack understanding on how to take the medicine safely, and may not understand why it is so important to continue to remain in therapy (especially in asymptomatic non-communicable diseases). Increasing the patient’s understanding of their condition, and the management thereof, can play a significant role in increasing adherence.

Sometimes, of course, non-adherence isn’t a deliberate decision by the patient, but an unintentional side effect due to capacity and resource limitations. For example, problems physically accessing prescriptions, a prohibitive cost, or competing demands on a patient’s time can all result in non-adherence.

Literacy is also a large contributing factor – in the US alone, close to 90 million adults have inadequate health literacy. The consequential lack of understanding puts them at greater risk of hospitalization and poorer clinical outcomes. Their beliefs about and attitudes toward health and treatment effectiveness, together with previous experiences with pharmacological treatments, also affect their level of adherence.
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