Blockchain technology has been heavily involved in many industries and healthcare services have benefited a lot from it, too. According to GMInsights, the blockchain technology market in healthcare reached more than $280 million in 2020.
In this article, we will see how blockchain can effectively support healthcare technologies and how it can help with data storage.
Benefits of blockchain
But which are the benefits of using blockchain in healthcare? Well, some of the benefits of blockchain are the classic ones. Let’s see which they are.
Security
Blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, is now used by many industries in their operations, including supply chain management and financial services. This digital ledger can make all kinds of processes more efficient. For example, it replaces traditional bank transactions with safe peer-to-peer money transfers.
Transparency of data
Blockchain technology is a transparent, distributed ledger that can efficiently record transactions between two parties. Each participant within the system sees only their own specific transactions — information about other users’ activity remains hidden from them to protect privacy. Blockchain technology means businesses don’t have to worry about double accounting or tampering of data, because all records are entered in real time and cannot be altered by anyone on the network.
Faster speeds
No matter the industry, blockchain can help business-to-business transactions become more efficient. Paperwork and physical documentation are time-consuming and prone to error, which is where blockchain really shines — it reduces the need for third parties, streamlines transactions, and eliminates errors which can cost lives in the healthcare industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic jumpstarted digital health innovations accelerating the adoption of new technologies. Daniel Kivatinos, co-president and co-founder of DrChrono, an EverCommerce solution that is developing an essential platform and services for modern medical practices, shares his healthcare technology trends and predictions for 2022.
The Internet of Things (IoT) will become more common inpatient monitoring. As patients are seeking more remote medical care, IoT and wearables that can stream data to the provider and care team, this new breakthrough will allow the providers to get paid for remote monitoring but also enable patients to keep track of their own data. One simple example is an Internet connected weight scale at home, it will make a patient accountable and allow the provider to also track the patients progress.
Telehealth. Like last year, we are going to see more and more adoption of telehealth among patients and other specialties in 2022. Physicians, medical practices, urgent care clinics and care teams are turning to more virtual healthcare experiences. An Updox survey reported that 51 percent of respondents say that they would continue using telehealth services after the pandemic has ended because they like the convenience it offers.
Furthermore, a recent report from McKinsey indicates that “telehealth use increased 38X from the pre-COVID-19 baseline” further supporting that telehealth is here to stay. Daniel added, “Telehealth will become the norm in healthcare. I foresee it might even overtake normal in person visits in specific areas like mental health and physical remote therapy.”
With such a hustle and bustle around cryptocurrencies, spot trading, or margin trading at Bitcoin Broker, could you ever imagine that blockchain technology can be helpful in the healthcare domain?
Possibly, the first thing that comes to mind once you hear blockchain is a virtual currency. However, this is not the only sphere where blockchain technology is applied. We have prepared for you the list of healthcare use cases. Read on to discover them.
Electronic health records are getting more and more accessible with blockchain
Blockchain for healthcare is most popular at the moment because it keeps our medical records safe and secure. In the healthcare industry, security is one of the biggest concerns. In the period between 2009 and 2017, over 176 million patient records were exposed as a result of data breaches. Data stolen by the perpetrators included credit card and banking details, as well as health and genomic testing records.
As technology is able to keep an incorruptible, decentralized, transparent log of all patient data, blockchain is rife with security applications. As well as being transparent, blockchain is also private, concealing a user’s identity with complex codes that can protect sensitive medical data. Patients, doctors, and healthcare providers can also share information quickly and safely due to the technology’s decentralized nature.
Managing electronic health records (EHR) can be challenging. Healthcare providers may have different EHRs for the same patient, depending on their location. CareCloud hopes to change that with APIs and blockchain technology. Their goal is to give patients more control. Patients will have the ability to authorize the exchange of medical records between doctors. An API that runs on the Hyperledger blockchain platform is currently available.
Data of all patients is kept secure
One more example of such a blockchain-based program is Akiri. This company provides the healthcare industry with a network-as-a-service that protects patient data while transporting it. As a network and protocol, Akiri does not store any data; instead, it establishes policies and configures data layers in real-time with the goal of verifying the data’s sources and destinations. Akiri makes sure healthcare data remains secure and is only shared with authorized parties when they need it.
The healthcare industry is under intense pressure to improve its efficiency. However, interoperability between technology and various integrated systems presents many challenges that are hindering health facilities from being fully connected and productive.
We have known for years that healthcare needs solutions that artificial intelligence can provide. But the initial proofs of concept have taken too long to materialize. Without clear boundaries and use cases showing how AI in healthcare can work, leadership teams are unable to horizontally collaborate with each other.
How AI in Healthcare Could Solve Interoperability Problems
Technology has the potential to transform the way healthcare works for patients, but right now, interoperability is difficult to attain. Despite industry guides such as the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, data is still a messy business. Data is stored in different ways and in different silos — and not every facility has the ability to read and understand the information contained within the respective silos and make it actionable.
This has a heavy impact on how practitioners work with technology. A radiologist reading film and a doctor making a diagnosis for a chronic pain patient only have access to their siloed expertise. With AI solutions in healthcare, data can be drawn from different disciplines and diagnosis can become faster and smarter.
When used in conjunction with AI, blockchain technology has the power to help practitioners and organizations work together without security risks. Because the blockchain represents a transparent, single source of information that cannot be changed, it can store data from multiple sources and create a harmonized picture of truth that different users can access without bias. In addition, limits can be put in place as to who has access to the data.
This helps healthcare experts form a central hub where the very best knowledge, therapies, and drug research can be pooled, therefore helping target diseases more effectively while keeping patient and research data absolutely secure and private.
It’s clear that leaders at healthcare organizations need to remove the siloed approach and develop an atmosphere of increased collaboration. But how, exactly?
How Blockchain, AI, and Healthcare Can Work Together
Blockchain technology in healthcare helps fulfill all four kinds of interoperability defined by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society: foundational, structural, semantic, and organizational. Blockchain’s uses in healthcare create a basis — a structure — where data can live safely and transparently. Then, blockchain can enable a rendering that helps different kinds of readers see and understand the data.
Two aspects of blockchain technology that are especially interesting to the healthcare industry are permissioned blockchains and smart contracts. A permissioned blockchain maintains the privacy of data, knows all the stakeholders, and makes data viewable by actors on the network who are authorized to see it. Smart contracts are “instructions” on the blockchain that are executed automatically once all necessary conditions or events are met. This means decisions can be made available automatically without human intervention. That’s where the power of AI’s uses in healthcare really materialize. This harmonized dataset — coupled with safe and secure automation — means that AI can be used to make faster, better, and more predictive decisions.
Data is the engine behind AI, but it’s also becoming the engine behind healthcare systems and how doctors diagnose and treat patients. If we can aggregate and translate vast amounts of data into streamlined workflows, AI can be used to efficiently diagnose and monitor patients, detect illness, accelerate drug development, and seamlessly run clinical trials.
The ingredients for interoperability are all there, but it’s now up to operators and developers to find ways to work together. The benefits of AI in healthcare are massively transformative — as long as we can find ways to solve problematic perceptions of blockchain and data privacy and get human beings to open up their silos.
No one technology will save the future of healthcare interoperability. It will take collaboration between developers, operators, academics, drug researchers, and an interwoven stack of technologies to bring together a universe of data and put it to good use.
Q: What is the state of artificial intelligence (AI) within healthcare organizations and services now?
Patel: In a 2019 DXC survey of more than 600 global companies, we found nearly half (48%) of healthcare executives and board members expect artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to play a significant role in their digital strategies three years from now — the most of any technology or industry practice. Nearly one in three (32%) expect that assessing and adopting new digital tools, such as AI and blockchain, will be one of the three most critical aspects of digital decision-making in the coming year.
Of course, while discussion about AI has become ubiquitous, and while the promise has been great, adoption in healthcare has been slow. Yet AI has the potential to address multiple shortcomings in healthcare, such as misdiagnosis, treatment errors, wasted resources, process inefficiencies and physician burnout. As the need for high-quality, affordable healthcare mounts, using data to make better-informed healthcare decisions is essential. Healthcare organizations will accelerate the use of AI to better anticipate patient needs, improve treatment decisions and reduce health risks in select cohorts moving forward.
Q: What’s an example of a way in which AI is already changing healthcare?
Patel: Some healthcare organizations’ prioritization of AI is focused on facilitating the rise of precision medicine, which aims to tailor medical treatment to each individual’s specific profile by employing digital analytic tools.
The goal of precision medicine is to provide more accurate information about the patient’s condition, the population subset they belong to, and the treatments that are most effective for that group. This enables both doctors and patients to decide on a course of action that’s more precisely suited to the individual’s profile. AI, and in particular ML, takes precision medicine to the next level with the ability to read large datasets and improve accuracy and prediction of outcome for patients.
Q: How can AI and providers work together to improve health outcomes?
Patel: There is a concern among some providers that AI will replace the need for human workers; however, AI should be viewed as a tool to enhance and scale providers through the automation of simple tasks, freeing up time for providers to spend with their patients (“high tech, high touch”). AI empowers doctors and other healthcare professionals to take better care of patients by identifying and streamlining the who, what, how and where of healthcare, giving providers more time to connect with patients and deliver personalized, compassionate care.
Healthcare and pharma is one of the fastest-developing industries today, with 2019 characterized by a diversity of startups developing blockchain-based solutions to track and trace global drug supply.
The Quality Assurance engineers at QA Madness predict the active use of blockchain and the growth of traceability system solutions. This trend was offered in 2018 by the Global Future Council Report on Health. But since we get more and more healthcare digital software that functions on the blockchain, I think the trend will be gaining traction in 2020.
Blockchain has all chances to revolutionize the industry, making the global pharma export/import/supply transparent and safe. Blockchain can divide pharmaceutical suppliers and customers as well as to provide secure record-keeping of each transaction. This is by far the most effective and transparent way to ensure trust among the supply chains.
Although usually blockchain apps differ, they share a common approach — creating nodes, digital financial transactions distributed among several parties. That means blockchain creates a corruption-resistant system where the nodes detect legitimate data and, therefore, enable them within the system.
The data itself looks like a series of chronologically organized transactions with a unique digital signature. Such mapping supports stable activity regulation where a person, system or company openly links to the data they contributed.
Therefore, digital signatures, hash values, encryption — all standard security features will come in handy for those who develop a blockchain app for tracing pharma products.
The benefits such traceability system brings
Data protection. Blockchain capacity combines streamlined visibility of stakeholders’ movements through the supply chain transits with private data messaging. The system prevents sensitive business data leakage. Permission-based private messaging controls the list of partners you trust.
Trust and transparency. This is about certifying the drug & material suppliers and the opportunity to trace the whole journey in any supply chain. The possibility to trace stakeholders at any supply chain stage is by far the most effective way to eliminate global illegal drug shipping. As a result, drug safety blockchain creates a greater sense of trust between pharmaceutical companies and patients. Moreover, medicine turn back policy will become much more effective through the traceable supply chain.
Easy and fast management. Blockchain pharmaceutical supply helps to identify the trusted trading and supply service providers. The technology sends quick batch reminders to detect the exact location and source of medicines maintaining increased safety of patients’ health.
There is much hype with regards to the use of blockchain technology in the field of healthcare due to its distributed ledgers. Many organizations have disappointed with the use of blockchain because of incomplete or partial knowledge. According to the experts, the blockchain development solutions are the future of the global healthcare industry. Many experts are involved in the experiment to implement the technology in the various healthcare departments. The following are the various predictions offered by the blockchain according to the experts in future.
The wait is over. Let’s jump into the interesting predictions for the growth of blockchain from expert’s perspective
Consent management
Blockchain will become an important part of the management in the healthcare industry to enable the sharing of information. Data is currently stored in the electronic health record system based on various individuals. Blockchain technology will enable the storage of the patient’s data which will enable the data exchange and treatments and privacy preferences on the blockchain. This will allow data to be accessed by the various stakeholders and officials.
Tokenization of the non-cash assets
A token can represent anything like real estate information, a physical object and also an outcome. Ruban Selvanayagam of UK real estate company Property Solvers comments: “many industries with huge asset bases are exploring blockchain technology and smart contracts to create broader efficiencies whilst keeping things completely secure.” The tokens will be able to help the officials manage the various results of the healthcare industry from the end of the institutions as well as patients. Tokens are used to reduce the burden of the experts and also help enhance the patients care as well as medications.
Making micropayments
Under the value-based care system, the providers will reimburse the wellness of the patients not for the quality but the care of the patients. So, it will become easy to use the process to make universal payment interfaces that will help patients make micropayments. This will also help organizations achieve the desired goals or outcomes and enhance innovations. Similarly, the tracking of the co-operative pays and the share of the medical expenses could be able to simplify the blockchain payment interface. It provides the opportunity to the organizations to buy the outcomes from the service providers.
Provider credentialing
To store and maintain the directories of the healthcare industry is a very critical task. The organizations have to keep the data up to date and also have to face the complex issues related to the patient’s data. To handle and manage the paperwork, the personnel need proper training and should possess the ability to understand the various aspects and important features. But blockchain provides a user-friendly environment that can simplify the usage of the system.
Electrical usage reductions
The blockchain technology will help you to reduce the electricity requirements, and it also helps enhance the speed and scalability of the system in the big concerns. It increases the transaction speed to enhance efficiency and reduce the cost of the transactions. Blockchain provides proof of work approaches to lessen the consumption of the electricity in data collection, storage, processing and other tasks.
If you want to know about the use cases that blockchain revolutionized healthcare industry, stay tuned until the end.
In many cases, it becomes difficult to track the various activities of the medical suppliers like pharmacies. The Blockchain approach will help healthcare track the products from the suppliers to the specific receivers whether they are healthcare institutions or the patients. This helps the healthcare institutions to ensure the integrity of the various products as well as different pharmacies.
Imagine for a second: you’re walking through the busy halls of your local hospital, only to notice that the doctors and nurses around you are constantly checking their phones and tablets. It strikes you as odd, and you can’t help but think: Isn’t anyone getting any work done around here?
Actually, they are.
With over 70 percent of examined patients using at least one health app to manage their diagnosed condition, and more than 318,000 mobile healthcare apps available in top app stores worldwide, the picture of doctors and nurses relying on their devices as literal “mobile assistants” is becoming a highly sought-after reality.
While this perspective is often bolstered by positive reviews of hand-held computer use by healthcare professionals – where digital assistant devices improved physician effectiveness during patient documentation, patient care, information seeking and professional work patterns — the mHealth industry still has a lot of room to grow in terms of digital health infrastructure.
Not to be put off, mHealth developers have nevertheless continued to advance their compliance, security, accessibility, and efficiency practices in the face of wide-scale transformative change. And when asked, most mHealth developers (myself included) will tell you that what motivates us to keep going has to do with the massive potential these technologies have to literally transform the field of medicine as we know it.
And what exactly is thatpotential? Every day our news feeds are inundated with articles promoting the latest in mHealth technology – from mobile apps that can perform an ultrasound, to apps that help patients track their own symptoms – so it can be hard to navigate the ever-widening world of mobile healthcare.
In light of such a big subject then, I’ve often taken to cementing my own understanding of mobile health by thinking about the ways in which these applications are already affecting physicians, clinicians, and other practitioners at every stage of their medical career.
Put differently, from the time that an aspiring healthcare professional begins their educational journey, to their first-accepted payment for needed treatment, mobile health apps are helping doctors transform the field of medicine before our very eyes. Here’s how:
Medical Education
In a lot of our popular media, physician education is represented as an arduous journey from beginning to end. With long nights studying, cadavers to examine, and an infinite amount of medical information to digest, med students are flocking to (mobile) medical education applications that can help them test their own knowledge in a way that suits their learning style.
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Healthcare and pharma is one of the fastest-developing industries today, with 2019 characterized by a diversity of startups developing blockchain-based solutions to track and trace global drug supply.
There is much hype with regards to the use of blockchain technology in the field of healthcare due to its distributed ledgers. Many organizations have disappointed with the use of blockchain because of incomplete or partial knowledge. According to the experts, the blockchain development solutions are the future of the global healthcare industry. Many experts are involved in the experiment to implement the technology in the various healthcare departments. The following are the various predictions offered by the blockchain according to the experts in future.
