Table of Contents
Data integrity, an adherence towards safeguarding medical data, is a priority for practitioners as they hold sensitive medical histories. Considering that patient data holds personal details, treatment records, and sensitive information, data breaches bring forth alarming ramifications. Such data can be misused if it falls into the wrong hands in terms of identity theft, fraud, and medical claim scams. Since a lot is at stake for the healthcare industry, blockchain in healthcare presents itself as a defender.
To say that blockchain technology is commended for its tamper-proof, traceable, and transparent nature, healthcare institutions are adopting it to secure their patients’ medical records. Such association eliminates the chances of data breaches with multiple authorization, access control, and smart contracts. This has led prominent healthcare institutions to defend their systems.
Such a scenario highlights the concept of decision-makers hiring blockchain healthcare companies to secure their solutions. While they have valuable technology and industry knowledge, it is preferable for you, as a part of the healthcare C-suite, to have a comprehensive understanding. Since that is the premise, the bifurcation below can prove worth the time and investment for you.
How Blockchain in Healthcare is Restructuring the Industry
As technologies become more inventive, so do cyberattacks and system vulnerabilities. This sophistication is a reason why institutions are opting for blockchain in healthcare. Blockchain is recognized as a decentralized storage system that secures patient data and autonomously adheres to healthcare data security standards, such as HIPAA and GDPR.
Not only that, but blockchain has been bringing forth traceable tracks of the medical and pharmaceutical supply chain. With capabilities of immutability and traceability, blockchain app development has changed the perspective on safety.
The concept of blockchain healthcare data protection does not stop here but brings forth a secure medium for data sharing and clinical trials. For instance, MedRec was developed at MIT Media Lab to solve the fragmented and insecure systems for handling patient data. The main goal was to ensure that healthcare records are stored securely, with a tamper-proof history and accessible to patients and healthcare providers when needed. Look at the image below to understand the difference it is making for different decision-makers within the healthcare chain.
Challenges of Blockchain in Healthcare And Their Solutions
While modernizing, safeguarding vulnerabilities, and securing medical data, healthcare practitioners often come across obstacles based on system legacies, compliance, and data fragmentation. To begin utilizing blockchain in healthcare, pinpointing the issues and finding a solution becomes a crucial approach.
For instance, outdated legacies have negligible scalability capacity for blockchain integration. Such complexities may reflect the issue, but can be resolved with a blockchain development company that has expertise in the field. This way, you can utilize blockchain technology to address challenges and opportunities in healthcare. To understand them in-depth, let’s dive in for more information.
Integration With Legacy Systems
As mentioned above, many healthcare institutions still rely on outdated systems that don’t support modern technologies like blockchain. This lack of integration prevents secure, seamless sharing and medical data protection.
The Solution:
To overcome the issue of an outdated legacy system appropriately, Blockchain can integrate through middleware solutions. This ensures secure medical data storage and sharing without needing a complet overhaul. With API-based solutions, healthcare organizations can work on healthcare data privacy across both old and new platforms, enabling improved interoperability and data security.
Regulatory and Compliance Concerns
It is common knowledge in the healthcare sector that it is heavily regulated. This means that institutions using blockchain for medical data storage must comply with regulations like HIPAA and GDPR.
The Solution:
To overcome the challenge of compliance, Blockchain presents auditability and immutable records that can support compliance with healthcare regulations. Smart contracts can automate patient consent management, ensuring that medical data is accessed only with appropriate consent and that all actions are logged for auditing purposes, helping organizations meet compliance requirements and healthcare data security.
High Initial Investment
Adopting blockchain technology for medical data protection requires a significant initial investment in infrastructure, technology, and training, which might deter healthcare providers.
The Solution:
Cloud-based blockchain solutions can help reduce infrastructure costs, making the technology more accessible and affordable for healthcare providers, even in the early stages.
Data Storage Limitations
Blockchain, being decentralized and immutable, requires substantial storage space, which could be problematic for large volumes of medical data, such as medical imaging or patient histories.
The Solution:
To address this, off-chain storage solutions can be used, where the actual data is stored on secure cloud platforms, while blockchain stores hashes or references to that data. These applications of blockchain technology ensure data integrity and security without overburdening the blockchain network, providing scalability for medical data protection.
Data Fragmentation Across Healthcare Systems
It is a concern to healthcare practitioners that their medical data is often fragmented across various systems. Such a scenario makes it difficult for providers to access a complete and accurate patient record, potentially compromising patient care and security.
The Solution:
Blockchain offers a decentralized data ledger that securely connects healthcare systems, allowing them to share patient data in real-time. This improves healthcare data security and interoperability, ensuring that medical records are accurate, up-to-date, and securely protected across different institutions, enhancing data security and accessibility for healthcare providers.
Real-World Examples and Use Cases of Blockchain in Healthcare
The applications of blockchain in healthcare are a consideration factor when healthcare institutions are looking for reasons to move ahead with integration. A better approach is to draw a parallel from real-world examples. That being said, we present the use cases and examples worthy of mention.
1. Medical Record Management Systems in Blockchain
An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) management system enables the secure and immutable storage of blockchain-based medical records across multiple healthcare practitioners. These decentralized systems keep the patient data securely stored and can be used to share the information based on authorization.
For instance, by using blockchain, MedRec facilitates real-time sharing of medical records among various healthcare providers, ensuring data integrity and enhancing patient care while reducing administrative costs.
2. Blockchain-Based Consent Management
Consent management assists in automating and streamlining healthcare processes while ensuring that patient consent for data sharing, medical procedures, and research is obtained. The blockchain in healthcare use cases for consent management ensures that patients’ consent is tamper-proof and can be updated or revoked in real time.
Clintex, a blockchain platform, enables the management of consent for clinical trials, allowing patients to give, track, and revoke consent for their participation, thereby ensuring compliance and transparency in research.
3. Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Tracking
Every transaction, from manufacturing to distribution, is recorded on the blockchain, ensuring the authenticity and traceability of drugs with a pharmaceutical supply chain tracking management system. This reduces the risk of counterfeit medicines entering the market.
MediLedger is a blockchain-based project focusing on pharmaceutical industry track-and-trace solutions. It assists stakeholders who verify the authenticity of drugs, reduce fraud, and ensure compliance with regulations like the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).
4. Medical Billing and Claims Management
The blockchain technology in healthcare industry can be applied to streamline the medical billing and claims management process. Creating an immutable ledger of transactions reduces errors, fraud, and delays in claims processing, ensuring faster and more accurate reimbursements for healthcare providers.
Solve.Care allows for seamless coordination of benefits, claims, and payment processing, improving the accuracy and efficiency of healthcare billing.
5. Provider Credentialing and Identity Verification
A blockchain-based provider credentialing and identity verification software simplifies provider credentialing by creating a decentralized and immutable record of a healthcare professional’s qualifications, licenses, and certifications. This reduces the time and effort spent verifying credentials, ensuring that only qualified professionals provide care for data privacy and security in healthcare.
MedCred, a blockchain-based identity verification system, helps hospitals and healthcare providers quickly verify the credentials of doctors and medical professionals.
6. Telemedicine and Virtual Health Identity
Healthcare app development combined with blockchain can provide a secure, verifiable virtual health identity for patients using telemedicine services. It ensures that the identity of both patients and healthcare providers is verified, and all medical records, communications, and prescriptions are securely logged as a future of blockchain in healthcare.
Doc.com is a telemedicine platform that utilizes blockchain technology to ensure secure virtual consultations. It creates a verified digital identity for both healthcare providers and patients, providing safe, compliant telehealth services with an immutable record of each consultation.
Combining Intelligent Technologies With Blockchain in Healthcare Industry
With modernization happening everywhere, the use of blockchain in healthcare must combine with other revolutionary technologies. For instance, blockchain has been proven to be a valuable asset in terms of resolving big data security and privacy issues in healthcare. This being the core affiliation that healthcare institutions are looking forward to, you must also comprehend the infusion.
| Intelligent Technology | Blockchain Integration in Healthcare |
| AI in Healthcare | Blockchain and AI in healthcare analyze stored data for predictive insights, ensuring data integrity and transparency in decision-making. |
| Internet of Things (IoT) | IoT devices collect data that is securely recorded on blockchain, enhancing real-time patient monitoring. |
| Machine Learning | Blockchain stores secure datasets for training machine learning models, improving accuracy and reducing fraud. |
| Cloud Computing | Cloud solutions store blockchain data, offering secure, scalable access to healthcare records. |
| Robotic Process Automation (RPA) | Blockchain ensures secure, transparent automation of healthcare processes like billing and claims. |
| Big Data Analytics | Blockchain stores large healthcare datasets, enabling analytics to drive insights and improve care and operations. |
Significant Benefits of Blockchain in Healthcare
As we have contemplated the cognitive technologies, it is time to state the conclusive benefits of blockchain in healthcare. Medical record data management is among the many features of sharing, allocations, and security, all in one. While these are priorities, there are other benefits that need to be stated for your comprehension.
Data Integrity in Healthcare
Blockchain ensures accurate and tamper-proof medical records, providing trust in data integrity in healthcare. That being said, it is evident that it reinstates the concept of data privacy and data breach security.
Patient-Centric Data Ownership
Among the many benefits of blockchain in healthcare, patient-centric ownership is worth the investment. This way, the patients have autonomy over their information and can share the practitioners only if they find it necessary.
Real-Time Access and Automation
Blockchain enables real-time sharing of medical data, automating processes like billing, claims, and patient monitoring with the assistance of smart contracts in healthcare.
Defense Against Data Breach
Healthcare institutions can build HIPAA-compliant healthcare apps that ensure the confidentiality of patients and doctors and provide zero access to the outside world with the information.
Why Trust AppsChopper for Healthcare Data Security?
The entire bifurcation stated the transformational motion of blockchain for healthcare data management and medical record protection. It also casts light on the fact that the in-depth nature of blockchain can only be achieved with professional blockchain healthcare companies that have worked on similar projects. That being said, it becomes an imperative move to outsource your blockchain development services for healthcare and safeguard your patient data. a
AppsChopper, a healthcare-focused blockchain development company, is a decade-long proficient expert in building such integrations and solutions. We have 200+ blockchain experts with an extensive understanding of the industry. Coming to the cost of blockchain app development, we ensure that we present our clients with quotations that empower them to make better decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can blockchain integrate with existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems?
Yes, the blockchain can be integrated with your existing EHR system based on your integration requirements and needs.
Is blockchain scalable for large healthcare systems?
Scalability reflects the capacity of a solution to expand to meet future needs. The blockchain technology in healthcare is considered to be scalable.
What are real-world use cases of blockchain worth discussing in healthcare?
Real-world use cases of blockchain in healthcare include medical record management, consent management, pharmaceutical supply chain tracking, clinical trials integrity, and provider credentialing.
What is the future of blockchain in healthcare data protection?
The future of blockchain in healthcare data protection lies in enhancing cybersecurity, bringing tamper-proof data storage systems, and traceable supply chain systems.
