How Can Medical Blockchain Help the Healthcare Industry?

Meta-Description - Definition of Blockchain, Ways Blockchain is transforming Healthcare, Ways Blockchain is fixing Industry Issues, Real Use Cases, Future of Blockchain in Healthcare Industry

Introduction

The Healthcare industry is often known to be intricate and complex. This statement can draw some major controversies. By complex and intricate, here it means that even though this industry has undergone radical innovations in certain aspects like in medicines, drugs, vaccines, clinical trials, and in the adoption of cloud computing, it needs major overhauling in other aspects. Those are maintenance of patient data, data analysis, and accuracy, drug traceability, supply chain management, and cybersecurity.

Blockchain has the potential of eradicating the issues plaguing the industry and reforming healthcare by keeping the patient at the very crux of the medical ecosystem system and establishing increased security, interoperability as well as privacy of the stored patient records. The value of blockchain technology in healthcare was $ 2.12 billion in the year 2019 and is expected to reach $ 3.49 billion by the year 2025, with a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period, from 2020 to 2025. 

 

 Image from: Mordor Intelligence

No wonder, use cases of blockchain applications in healthcare and scope of blockchain for health records are being explored, experimented, discovered day and night by numerous blockchain and healthcare companies. By tracking pharmaceuticals, enhancing payment options, and decentralizing data of patient health history, Blockchain has affirmed itself as an irreplaceable tool in healthcare. 

Well all that being said and done, this article will reflect upon the numerous errors and missteps that can be averted through incorporating blockchain in healthcare and will discuss how blockchain is presently being used in healthcare. 

Here are the things that we will get covered in this blog:

●        What’s blockchain?

●        What is Blockchain in Healthcare?

●        Which healthcare industry issues can be solved through blockchain?

●        Ways how blockchain can be used in the Healthcare Industry

●        Predictions about the future of Medical Blockchain

●        Conclusion

So let’s start with defining Blockchain, how does blockchain help healthcare and how blockchain is used in healthcare.

What’s Blockchain?

The concept of blockchain can be defined as a decentralized system within which historical or transactional records are maintained, stored, and recorded, across a peer to peer network of personal computers known as nodes. To illustrate further, it is a public digital ledger that is immovable and quite similar to a database. It relies on established cryptographic techniques. 

So you are forgiven if you think Blockchain is mainly about Cryptocurrency. When discussing blockchain, people often link it to cryptos and Bitcoin. But blockchain is much more than cryptocurrency when it comes to the robustness of an application. It is immutable and secure. The network requires verification before a participant records any information. It enables a trustless collaboration, as the information gets stored and accordingly is shared across all the network participants, keeping an immutable audit trail of all the past and ongoing interactions. It is indeed the kind of disruptive technology that can produce a seismic shift within any industry and just about exactly what healthcare needs.

What Is Blockchain in Healthcare?

As defined above, blockchain is a distributed, decentralized digital ledger that is filled with a plethora of highly encrypted, time-stamped virtual records that are continuously updated. Without this technology, the existence of cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or Bitcoin would not have been possible. Each particular unit of the said digital ledger is known as a block. These blocks are arranged and tied together through crypto technology that makes them literally immutable. 

No matter how you can look at it, Healthcare combined with Blockchain is a match made in heaven. Stating the undeniable fact that the medical industry becomes a victim of security breaches almost on a daily basis, it is a no-brainer to use this technology to seal all of the loopholes. Also, there is more to blockchain than this, which is why intelligence firms are exploring the scope of blockchain technology in healthcare and blockchain in medicine. A blockchain monitored health information exchange could unleash the true potential of interoperability. Its systems can curtail or diminish the costs and friction of the current intermediaries. 

To further illustrate, the term blockchain for healthcare holds immense scope and comprehensive significance for the stakeholders. This technology has the capability of connecting the fragmented systems which can produce insights to better examine the value of personalized care. Capitalizing & investing in the prospects of blockchain for medical records is already getting widespread attention. 

The adoption and integration of blockchain could save the costs of the healthcare industry up to $100 to $150 billion annually by 2025 in Information Technology and data breach-related costs, support function, operation, and personnel costs, and through reducing the sale of counterfeit and fraud products. 

Which healthcare industry issues can be solved through blockchain?

There are numerous data challenges that the Big Pharma is grappling with. Let’s see how Blockchain helps healthcare to solve those:

●        Drug Traceability 

The issue of drug counterfeiting is a harrowing one in the healthcare industry. Health Research Funding Organization revealed some statistics related to it: 

●        10-30% of the drugs marketed in the developing countries are cloned, so as to say counterfeited. 

●        The market for these counterfeit drugs is worth $200 billion annually.

●        Online sales of these cloned drugs account for $80 billion annually. 

●        Most of these drugs are either manufactured in China or India. 

●        About 60 distinct types of Pfizer medicines and products were being counterfeited in 2014. WHO assessed that 16% of these counterfeited drugs were made up of wrong ingredients, or contained the wrong level of ingredients putting the future of healthcare at risk. 

 

Image from: SuppyChainBeyond

 

The counterfeited products being highly different from the original product in both quality and composition can be extremely dangerous to the patients as these products do not have the active ingredients that they claim they do. So they are not able to treat and cure the disease that they are prescribed for. Furthermore, it can lead to death by triggering unexpected effects. It has also been estimated that this phenomenon can result in a loss of 10.2 billion euros annually to the European pharmaceutical sector. 

How Blockchain can help?

The main feature of blockchain technology that will come in use here, is security. The record of each new transaction is added to a particular block that is immutable and timestamped. This makes sure that the recorded information is ultimate and cannot be altered as one pleases. That also makes it easy to track a particular product. 

 

 Image from: Anca Petre

The main issue in the present times is that there is no harmony between the stakeholders of the supply chain and the origin of the products produced. They have an incomplete vision of the whole supply map. This is how the fake drugs enter the supply chain and reach the patients. With stakeholders having hold of each recorded information and history of transactions through blockchain, they can track each product that enters the market. Moreover, if they need to withdraw any batch from the market due to a certain issue they can track down the products easily and do the job without any complications.

●        Clinical Trials 

During and after the clinical trials are conducted, a considerable amount of health information and patient data are produced. Those are blood tests, statistics, quality reports, medical surveys, statistics, clinical documentation from a large group of people. This makes it hard to control and track everyone and often intentionally or unintentionally, mistakes are made along the way. As millions of dollars are invested by Pharmaceutical giants and their sponsors, which can lead to massive financial repercussions based on the end result, fraudulence is a common occurrence. This includes hiding, manipulating, or modifying data that could literally compromise the advancement of the clinical trial. This further jeopardizes and damages the organization’s reputation among regulatory patients and agencies.  

How Blockchain can help?

As you search on the network, Blockchain can provide you with proof of the existence of any document. If you want to add new data through the transactional model, the nodes will have to give their consent that it is logical and legitimate with the history of blockchain. If any individual attempts to manipulate a piece of existing health information, it would require modifying the records of most of the computers that are in the network. This feature of the blockchain systems prevents the alteration of data in regards to the clinical trials. Each of the trial data is assigned a unique, distinctive code that is specific to the document content. If a healthcare professional goes through the stored data and starts suspecting its authenticity, they can seamlessly verify that by comparing it to the original information that was stored in the blockchain system. To do so they need to run the data that will produce a new code. If the newly created code is the same as the original code then it means that none of the data has been altered.  

This will boost the collaboration and make way for more scientific advances especially when it comes to curing rare diseases.

●        Patient Data Management

When it comes to the subject of patient data management, it faces two main issues within the healthcare industry. First, not all patients are the same, because what might work on one patient, might surely not work on the other. It is due to the aspect of inter-individual variability. For this reason, complete access to their collected medical records is needed, in order to provide a personalized and patient-centered treatment.

Second is the sharing of that information among the medical community is a huge challenge. Medical data of this kind is highly sensitive and is always instructed to be made shareable to the professionals through the mode of a secure network. Lack of a robust cybersecurity structure is a major obstacle in the way of scientific discoveries. Due to the lack of a common database, the medical records are stored in various locations, which makes it highly problematic for researchers to access and track back on the information stored. 

Also, there is the issue of data ownership. A patient cannot be given full ownership of his or her medical records as they can alter or delete any information as he/she pleases. This could have serious repercussions on his health putting the patient safety at risk. Then again the drawback to it is, if the patient does not have ownership of the data, he/she does not have authority over who is sharing and using it.

 

How Blockchain can help?

Blockchain can not only provide a solid structure for sharing the data but also security. Let’s see how: the healthcare providers gather information from the patients such as name, their date of birth, prescriptions, ambulatory records, EHR documents, and procedures performed. The data is stored in the existing databases or in the cloud computing systems. Each data source is tagged to a particular hash along with the public ID of the patient in the blockchain system. Smart Contracts manage patient data access. 

With the help of an API, stakeholders can search the blockchain that will show the whereabouts of the data without divulging the patient's identity. If required the patient can share his or her entire details of the medical record to any particular stakeholder. He or she could share non-identifiable information with the big pharmas or identifiable data with the doctors. The inherent advantage that comes with it is: the patient can have control over the access that he/she permits to his own medical records. The patient sets the condition of access through the mechanism of smart contracts. In fact, all of the conditions that the patient sets on his or her profile will be done through an API. 

Ways how blockchain can be used in the Healthcare Industry

The medical industry is heavily reliant on Blockchain alongside robust technologies like Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence. Here are some real use cases of how Blockchain is changing the Healthcare Industry:

●        Drug Supply Chain Transformation 

A market intelligence report by a credible research firm says, 

Blockchain technology has the ability to enhance the functionality, security, and data provenance of the pharmaceutical supply chain if implemented efficiently. 

 

The supply chain of the medical industry has been exploring ways of combating the problem of counterfeiting and falsification of drugs. Blockchain based companies like Viant are providing solutions related to the supply chain to pharma giants like GlaxoSmithKline to completely eradicate the issue. The application is based on the tracking technology of blockchain which will fine-tune the supply chain of the medical industry.

●        Bookkeeping of Clinical Trials

Given the present scenario, clinical trials have become the new normal. Keeping a track of their financials with accuracy through the bookkeeping process is a crucial need of the hour. It is for the seamless functioning and evaluation of the clinical trials. Here’s where blockchain firms have invented ways to streamline the process of bookkeeping and financial reporting. Boehringer Ingelheim has tied up with IBM to create a blockchain-powered system for its bookkeeping process. The database is for accentuating their very first project of clinical trials. Through this, the various aspects of the bookkeeping process will be enhanced up to tenfold.

●        Process of Form Filling  

Anytime someone is required to be admitted to hospital due to a serious illness, the task of admission takes a huge time cause of the arduous process of filling loads of forms. It feels seemingly as exhausting as conquering Mt. Everest! Blockchain can automate the task, saving our time and energy and companies like Kalibrate Blockchain are doing so. It has created FormDrop which is a mobile application running on a blockchain-powered engine called Universal Patient Index. Through this app, any person will be able to fill up the forms ahead of time, before prepping to go to a healthcare facility. By doing so, they can save their time by avoiding standing in lines. This will aid in increasing the productivity of healthcare employees.

Predictions about the future of medical blockchain

The scope of Blockchain in healthcare looks super up-and-coming and promising as it helps to solve some of the pressing issues afflicting the industry. As Blockchain is decentralized unlike the majority of the healthcare records that are centralized, we envision a progressive future. A future where blockchain acts as an element of a system in which patients will become stewards of their own medical data, in place of relying on a central source. Of Course, the application of blockchain comes with its own set of technical challenges. The process and number of steps to record, find and get the data can be complex and numerous, but with the help of emerging technologies like Machine Learning and AI, these problems will get resolved eventually.

Conclusion 

To answer the question, can blockchain be used in healthcare? Of Course yes. Blockchain will play a crucial role in improving the healthcare system reforming the future of healthcare. The vision of providing personalized healthcare does not seem like an impossible dream now with Medical Blockchain storing and securing massive amounts of data at scale. We are hoping that the production applications that are blockchain-powered will become commonplace by next year. 

Techexactly works with organizations that are facing unprecedented challenges in managing their healthcare supply chain to imbibe them with capabilities necessary to thrive in an increasingly demanding ecosystem and emerge stronger. We collaborate with companies across the industry value chain starting from Big Pharma to Biotech, from Medical Device to CRO - to thrive, grow, and innovate, from strategy through to the execution stage. 

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