Report by BIS research says that in the next 6 years the healthcare industry can save $100 billion per year by using Blockchain technology.
Usually, it is dangerous to cut costs in this area. When you’re dealing with health, any failure or slight decrease in efficiency can contribute to very serious complications. Life and death depend on the reliability of the IT systems and their ability to support rather than obstruct peoples’ work.
That’s why you can say that healthcare is the single most important industry, and requires state of art technologies. It deals with very sensitive data, requires perfect uptime, high safety and a guarantee that the data won’t disappear.
Blockchain can address all these issues. A couple of blockchain use cases can prove it.
Blockchain Use Cases in Healthcare
Supply Chain Management
We dedicated a whole separate post on the topic of Blockchain in Supply Chain Management. Healthcare has its own appliances within this field. The most important of them is managing pharmaceuticals – strictly controlled, very valuable goods that require proper storing conditions.
You can use blockchain solutions to store all the data on the process of their creation and delivery. With a supply chain on blockchain you can create complex, fully automated drug tracking processes that give you real-time data. What is more, they are immutable and cannot be falsified.
Storing and Sharing Healthcare Records
Accurate patient data management can be a matter of life and death. This being said, it is worth to mention that in many hospitals patients are still forced to fill paper forms.
Blockchain can provide safety and security for the vulnerable data on the patients’ health. Thanks to cryptography level provided by Blockchain, you can be sure that they are safe, while at the same time providing easy access for chosen parties.
Data Integration
You can unify all kind of data on one common Blockchain ledger and automatically synchronize across the whole system.It can help increase interoperability, and make sure you have access to all the important data when you need it.
Drug Trial Data Storage
It is not easy to manage and store drug trial data. They are a very expensive and vulnerable resource, with strictly limited access. Drug research can cost you a lot, and protecting the results is crucial to surviving on the market. Blockchain might be very useful in this matter, and a distributed ledger can be a tool to connect teams and projects across many research facilities.
Billing & Financial Data
Finally, here is the most known use case – Blockchain tokens as money. It is basically what Blockchain was created for.
You can use this technology to store transaction details and manage financial data. Considering how much money is in the Healthcare industry, it might be reasonable to consider using it for transactions and automated payments.
Benefits of Blockchain in Healthcare
Immutability
Immutability is very important in drugs supply chain management. According to WHO report, the counterfeit medicines market is worth about $75 billion. Blockchain can help to make sure, the drugs are legal, proven and original.
Transparency
Blockchain is a good medium to share data and grant universal access for authorized third parties. You can use it to store medical history and manage drug trial processes.
Cost reduction
Costs of healthcare are enormous. A properly built blockchain solution can reduce the need for maintenance and cut costs, while providing better reliability of the whole solution.
Security
The medical data need a great deal of protection. Blockchain cryptography solutions can help to secure them and prevent cyber threats.
Decentralization
Storing the data in a decentralized platform can save them in several scenarios in
