Blockchain for Healthcare 2024: Future-Proofing Healthcare
Blockchain for Healthcare 2024: Future-Proofing Healthcare
WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY?
It is a decentralized and globalized database where transactions that cannot be modified are recorded. These are encoded using cryptographic methods and are stored on servers (nodes). The nodes belong to the network and are spread across the world.
It is like a ledger that shows the information transfers made and the uploaded data with the exact date and time. A Blockchain is like a digital auditor that you can’t fool.
An example will help you better understand how it works.
‘User A’ wants to send a vital document to ‘User B,’ but first, this transaction is represented as a block on the Blockchain network. That block is transmitted to thousands of nodes that certify that this transaction is valid.
At that point, the block is added to the chain and recorded so that it is unchangeable. Then, ‘User B’ receives the document from ‘User A.’
BLOCKCHAIN IN MEDICINE:
This technology can be used for many things; banking transactions without intermediaries, certification of copyrights in literary works, streamlining bureaucracy, elections, and of course, medicine.
Can you imagine a world full of hospitals or health centers that could share data with their patients no matter where they are? With an authorship system like Blockchain, relevant medical information could be exchanged from any corner of the world. A patient’s allergies, history, clinical tests, treatments – all their medical information would be available to their doctor with a single click.
With Blockchain, health and technology go hand in hand as a system to facilitate the exchange of reports between doctors or between doctors and patients. The confidentiality of the medical history will be ensured, something that is now managed in a rudimentary way.
But this technology is not only applicable to the patient’s history. Blockchain will allow the transfer of data available on wearable deviceswith total security.
The healthcare industry is transforming little by little and the laws are becoming stricter in terms of data protection. Proof of that is the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that regulate with special attention the transfer of sensitive data. These policies are intended to safeguard patient careand it is achieved. However, many health care organizations continue to see a weakness in the exchange of information, and this is what Blockchain can solve.
PERSONALIZED MEDICINE GAIN STRENGTH
Many companies that offer technological solutions to doctors of the future have integrated Blockchain into their products. The objective: to offer the greatest transparency and security in their services to doctors from any corner of the world.
With this technology, doctors and patients verify health-related data using digital identities that are impossible to manipulate.
Blockchain will revolutionize the health sector and will mark a new point in the exchange of information. Communications between the doctor and the patient will be safe, easy, and direct.
This technology is decentralized, the information that is exchanged is impossible to modify and there is certain anonymity between all the agents involved. Without revealing the identity, transactions are linked to a person. This relationship of trust means that a third party is not necessary to verify the transaction.
A doctor can collect a complete record of all the health data of the patient. The first step is to create a medical history; then, a digital signature is generated that ensures the authenticity of the document and is encrypted. At all times, the patient can know who accesses their data, and of course, if these are modified at any point in the chain.
PRECISION IN MEDICINE
This technology offers advantages for research by allowing personalized patient datato be followed in time. Medicine could become more precise and would have a large amount of valid data for studies when collecting from patients of different settings.
Blockchain has come to revolutionize the business world. Since the beginning of the second millennium, the lack of trust in transaction systems has led to the emergence of transaction security systems. With these new technologies, we have the possibility of creating immutable and permanent records.
Blockchain offers the possibility of sharing millions of health data and involving different agents related to it: foundations, researchers, doctors, patients. All of these agents are united by the same interest: storing and sharing sensitive information to prevent diseases, diagnosing them, treating them, investigating them, and making Medicine a science only of data.
Applications to the health sector
For many experts, blockchain technology will change the way we understand business and society. Currently, there are different lines of research open, but without a doubt, one of the most promising is that which corresponds to the world of health.
Some of its present and future applications:
- Clinical data:With this technology, medical records and medical data can be read and shared with the complete certainty of their integrity. In each phase of the transaction or query we have at our disposal the ‘data traceability’; we can know what has happened or has been contributed in its passage by any of the agents (nodes) of the chain.
- Patient. With blockchain, the patient becomes the owner of their health data. You can access it(history, appointments, ailments, treatments) at any time, from any web browser or device. This ‘self-management will allow you to share them with whomever you deem appropriate. Besides, the software has already been developed that provides you an easy way to track doctor visits, medical bills, personal medical information, insurance, vaccinations, and pharmacy drugs.
- Greater security. Thanks to its sophisticated encryption, for many experts this would be the definitive solution to maintain complete privacy in medical records. An effective tool against hackers and an ally to streamline the exchange of documents between health providers and insurers.
- Global health ecosystem. If the ambitious test being carried out by the Central European company Iryo succeeds, in a few years, we will have a global and participatory healthcare ecosystem. The idea is to build a suitable platform to keep health records unified. Instead of all kinds of medical data from various providers stored in different formats and scattered across different systems, the blockchain-based solution promises to store data securely and allow patients to share their medical history anywhere in the world.
- Pharmaceutical industry. Blockchain bases its structure on different blocks. They are impossible to change without a trace. Translated to the pharmaceutical sector, it would ensure health records, clinical trials, cold chain management, and verification of temperature control (vaccines), or guarantee regulatory compliance. This particular application responds, for example, to the monitoring requirements of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA). This law requires a standard for the interoperable exchange of track and trace information.
- Fight against counterfeiting. Every year, tens of thousands of people die in the world due to the consequences of taking counterfeit medicines (WHO data). The use of blockchain would improve the traceability of the drug. Not to mention that it also allows stakeholders in the supply chain to easily interact and alert laboratories if counterfeit drugs are detected. Several companies are already working on the development of applications based on blockchain to control the origin of the medication acquired immediately. This system generates intelligent algorithms that make it possible to recognize more and more counterfeit medicines with the increase in the use of the application itself, andtherefore, of the data set used.
- Accelerating R&D. With a study system based on blockchain, researchers can quickly collect the necessary clinical data in a verified way, since the system stores all the data in a coherent and accessible infrastructure in which they are the patients themselves that grant access to others by sharing public and private keys. These ‘verified’ data will allow for more complex studies and more robust results. With better information available early in the process, companies can end trials when success seems unlikely and shift resources to projects that, under the data managed, have greater potential.
