A decade ago, the idea of blockchain being integrated into the healthcare sector was a far-fetched notion. However, healthcare has now evolved into a fundamental right and requires sophisticated technology to protect it. This is where web3 and blockchain come into the picture, providing decentralized and secure storage for sensitive patient information, ensuring tamper-proof and authorized access.
Not just a tech under R&D anymore, blockchain is turning out to be a super success story in the healthcare sector. What stood at USD 0.76 billion of market value in 2022, is pacing ahead at a CAGR of 34.02% . This means healthcare clinics, institutions, and medical facilities will embrace smart contracting-backed decentralization in different capacities and seek all the benefits that we have been discussing at length over the years.
While we are at it, it is worth mentioning the massive improvement in the scale of smart contracting over the years. What started as a simple logic to execute transactions is now driving complex business logic for a sector as big as healthcare. So, it is optimizing the drugs supply chains, maintaining EHRs, decentralizing the health insurance landscape or fastening clinical trials. There’s an ocean of opportunity for the tech in this industry.
Accurate EHR
Since Electronic Health Records (EHRs) store patients’ health information, including medical history, diagnoses, treatments, and test results, they are at a greater risk of tampering, thereby reducing and limiting optimal utilization. Blockchain facilitates secure and efficient data sharing, ensuring patient privacy and data security, and enhancing patient and clinical outcomes.
Here, EHRs can be stored on a distributed ledger accessible only to authorized parties, thereby preventing data breaches and addressing security issues. Creating a tamper-proof and auditable record of medical data ensures data validation and integrity through interoperability with EHR systems and medical devices, enabling real-time exchange of information.
By ensuring access to accurate medical records, healthcare providers can better care for patients, with blockchain’s distributed ledger accessible only to authorized parties, thereby preventing data breaches and addressing security issues. Needless to say, patients have more control over their EHR, thereby minimizing the vulnerability of cyber-attacks, breaches, and other attacks.
Fastened clinical trials & drug development
Blockchain has a significant impact on clinical trials by ensuring secure storage and transmission of data, thus ensuring accuracy, transparency, and accessibility. It speeds up the development of new drugs and treatments, potentially saving thousands of lives.
By creating a tamper-proof and auditable record of clinical trial data, the tech ensures data validation and integrity, reducing the risk of fraud and manipulation. Furthermore, it streamlines the processes, eliminates intermediaries, and reduces administrative costs, improving overall efficiency.
This can help to reduce the time and cost associated with clinical trials, allowing pharmaceutical companies to bring new drugs to market more quickly, and ultimately benefiting patients.
Blockchain can also reduce healthcare fraud by creating a transparent and immutable record of all transactions, adding legitimacy to all transactions and minimizing the possibility of manipulations.
As mentioned above, healthcare is a massive domain and caters to huge volumes of data every day. Therefore, the scope of any new tech, be it blockchain or AI, goes beyond the scope of any discussion including this article.
Apart from two of the most important use cases discussed above, there’s a streamline for the claims process in health insurance, reducing fraud, and providing more accurate and up-to-date information about patient care. There’s also personalized medicine through sharing genetic data and making it easier to develop personalized treatment plans for patients.
Time to embrace decentralized healthcare tech
The scope of blockchain in healthcare is vast, and the benefits it can bring to the sector are undeniable. From improving patient outcomes to enhancing data security and accuracy to streamlining processes and reducing costs, the technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare as we know it.
As healthcare becomes increasingly digitized, it is crucial to prioritize the security and privacy of sensitive patient information, and blockchain provides a solution that meets this need. With the industry growing rapidly, it is exciting to see the increasing adoption of blockchain and the innovation it brings to the healthcare sector.
(This article is authored by Vikram R Singh – CEO , Antier Solutions)
