5 Use Cases for Blockchain in Healthcare

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In the healthcare system, a blockchain network is utilized to store and share patient data amongst hospitals, diagnostic labs, drug companies, and doctors. Blockchain applications can precisely detect serious errors, including potentially deadly ones, in the medical industry. Here are the most used cases in blockchain in the medical sector.

1. Supply chain transparency

  • Verifying the provenance of medical goods to validate their validity is a significant concern for the healthcare sector as well as many other industries

  • Customers can have complete visibility and transparency of the products they are buying thanks to the use of a blockchain-based system to trace items from the moment of manufacture and at each stage through the supply chain

  • This is a critical issue for the sector, particularly in developing economies where tens of thousands of deaths are yearly brought on by fake prescription drugs

  • It is increasingly important for medical devices, too, which are proliferating quickly with the adoption of more remote health monitoring, and therefore also attracting the interest of bad actors

2. Patient-centric electronic health records

  • Data silos are a problem that affects healthcare systems worldwide, giving patients and their healthcare professionals an incomplete view of their medical histories

  • Making a blockchain-based medical records system that can be integrated with current electronic medical record software and serve as a comprehensive, single view of a patient’s record is one approach to solving this issue

  • The fact that each new item added to the blockchain, such as a doctor’s note, a prescription, or a test result, is converted into a distinct hash function, a brief string of letters and numbers, is very critical to emphasize

  • Instead, genuine patient data is not stored on the blockchain

  • Every hash function is distinct and can only be decoded with the owner of the data’s permission, in this case, the patient

3. Smart contracts for insurance and supply chain settlements

  • Healthcare professionals can use blockchain-based systems to authenticate their identities as businesses, log contract details, track transactions of goods and services, and track payment settlement details for those products and services

  • Beyond supply chain management, this type of environment enables insurers and trading partners in the healthcare business to operate under fully digital and, in some cases, automated contract conditions

4. Medical staff credential verification

  • Blockchain technology can be used to track the experience of medical professionals in a manner similar to tracking the provenance of a medical good

  • Reputable healthcare organizations and institutions can log the credentials of their staff, which streamlines the hiring process for these organizations

5. IoT security for remote monitoring

  • Security, is a significant problem in health IoT, both in terms of ensuring that patient data is private and secure and that it is not altered to produce incorrect results

  • It is also crucial that the supporting systems are extremely resilient to DDoS or other attacks disrupting service in some situations where a connected device may be relied upon in emergency situations, such as alerting an elderly person’s care provider that they have suffered a fall or a heart attack.

REFERENCE:

  1. https://stlpartners.com/articles/digital-health/5-blockchain-healthcare-use-cases/

DISCLOSURE:

None of these articles constitutes financial advice. Articles are highly summarised to make it easy for the reader and save your time, so please DYOR further before putting your hard-earned money into any product mentioned.

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