Blockchain Technologies and the Healthcare Sector
Technologies, for decades now, have been playing a critical role in several industries, enabling a transformative and disruptive innovation to services and products. The emergence of blockchain and its integration with other technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and big data will enable applications that are even more dynamic in the near future.
The healthcare sector is a data-intensive domain. Large amounts of data are created, disseminated, stored, and accessed daily from a variety of sources ranging from scans, imaging, patients’ records, etc. Technology plays a substantial role in enhancing the quality of care for patients (e.g. leveraging data analytics to make informed medical decisions) and potentially reduce costs by more efficiently allocating resources in terms of personnel, equipment, etc. Due to the nature of the industry, ensuring the security, privacy, and integrity of healthcare data is important. This highlights the need for a sound and secure data management system.
Blockchain, although initially designed for a peer-to-peer cash system, soon afterwards its potential for transacting any kind of data in various domains and industries resulting in major organization changes was realized. Having a system in which the role of a trusted third party is directly embedded in the system design instead of another organization or person was revolutionary and transformative, making blockchains one of the most disruptive technological innovations of the last twenty years. They are paving the way to groundbreaking research, technology development and disruptive innovation, igniting the creation of revolutionary business models and markets in a wide number of fields, including financial services, commerce, smart contracts, IoT, cyber-security, machine-to machine transactions, healthcare, and many others.
Blockchain, also known as Distributed Ledger Technology or DLT, is a peer-to-peer network on top of the internet. It was initially introduced in 2008 as the technology underlying bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that avoided a central authority for issuing currency, transferring ownership and confirming transactions. A blockchain can be thought of, as a distributed record of any type of transactions between parties, where transactions are validated and recorded in chronological order (in a sequence of “blocks”) by a decentralized network of peers, without the need for a central/trusted/third party. It enables peer-to-peer transactions without intermediaries, while at the same time validating and keeping a permanent public record of all transactions. Once added to the rest of the chain, the records are impossible to alter producing records whose content is undisputable and allows for complete transparency.
When a new transaction is added to the chain, all the participants in the network will validate it. They do this by applying an algorithm to the transaction to verify its validity. What exactly is understood by “valid” is defined by the blockchain system and can differ between systems. Then it is up to a majority of the participants to agree that the transaction is valid. A set of approved transactions is then bundled in a block, which is sent to all the nodes in the network. They, in turn, validate the new block. Each successive block contains a hash, which is a unique fingerprint, of the previous block.
Potential Application Areas in the Healthcare Sector
When it comes to healthcare, blockchain technology has the potential to do the following:
- Real item verification of doctor’s license status – alleviating a persistent challenge in fake licenses, qualifications and disciplinary evasion;
- Drug delivery supply chain auditability – the pharmaceutical sector is responsible for developing, manufacturing and distributing drugs. Counterfeit drugs have become over the years, an unrelenting issue due to the profits to be made through fraudulent unregulated manufacture. Fake medicines range from those which are frankly useless to highly dangerous substances threatening human life, with on occasion, incorporating highly toxic substances, or delivery methods (needles, capsules, tubes, etc) which are deployed to undercut legitimate provision;
- Insurance claim fraud detection – addressing the problem of insurance fraud in the healthcare sector;
- Continuing education validation – for doctors, nurses and health care providers, to ensure quality control around their skill acquisition is at the heart of global health delivery;
- Electronic Health Records – Digital wallets to store bespoke medical records, is the direction of the next decade’s travel, releasing patients to have their records in digital form. This will bring control back to the patient/owner on who can view their medical information, portability and accuracy;
- IoT Device Identity;
- Human identity (through fingerprints, iris, etc );
- Natural disaster affecting populated areas – through the establishment of health registers of all exposed people to allow the assessment of short and long-term impacts of the cataclysmic incident, enabling real time targeting of resources and services based on evidence-based need.
Empowering the patient/citizen
Innovations, whether radical, incremental, architectural – you name it – come and go. But it is not very often that they emerge to disrupt the status quo and how everything works. Blockchain-based patient-centric systems enable patients to have complete autonomy in managing their health information and encourages patients to be proactive. For the successful design and implementation of an interoperable transformative technology, with software apps and technology platforms communicating securely and seamlessly, exchange data, and use the exchanged data across health organizations and app vendors and any other stakeholder authorized to have access, requires the collaboration of both the public and private (private doctors, health insurances, public hospitals and regulators need to collaborate).
Connect with the HMT team at info @ Health Matters Technology to take the conversation for your area of delivery forward. We await your contact with enthusiasm for Blockchain Technology’s contribution to address your Health delivery challenge.