Blockchain technology is used in the IT sector and the demand for this technology is growing at a rapid pace.
With IT industry using this technology, even the healthcare sector is making use of this solve care technology. With enormous amount of data in the healthcare industry, there is a lot of pressure on the healthcare providers to keep cost under control and offer quality care to the patients.
However, by using the blockchain technology, there are many pressures that are put on the healthcare industry would be reduced to a greater extent. This offers win-win for both the healthcare providers and patients to securely and safely share the data, process claims and boost the medical research.
The best part of this blockchain technology is that it allows the patient to safely and privately access their medical records.
In addition, it allows the doctors to take a quick look at the medical history of the patients including the medicines that were ingested by them earlier and the information about the visit to the doctor, their health issues and surgeries that were underwent by them.
Here are a few ways on how blockchain is improving the solve care healthcare industry
Medical records: The blockchain technology that is implemented in the healthcare industry would abide to the HIPAA policies.
By using this technology, the physicians and hospitals would not prone to the security vulnerabilities so easily. The healthcare providers would be able to share the patient past and present medical records in a safe and secure way than earlier.
Patient access: With different blockchain, patients can access and control the ownership of their medical records. The records are traceable on the blockchain, reducing the risk of deleted information, missing vaccinations and false medication claims.
Smart contracts: Currently, smart contracts are the strongest case for introducing blockchain into healthcare. Blockchain reduces inefficiencies, allows for swift payments of medical services and automatically bills insurers.
Fraud: In recent years, healthcare has seen an influx in cyber security and fraud. Many times, this is due to a lack of communication between providers, hospitals and patients. Blockchain uses a transparent ledger to continuously track payments, prescriptions and medical documentation.
Paperwork: By implementing blockchain technology, providers and hospitals can further reduce the number of paper-based documents required. This could largely affect insurance transactions. With blockchain, patients and providers can eliminate the hassle of providing additional copies and transcriptions of medical services to insurers.
What is blockchain?
A blockchain is really nothing more than a decentralized, secure database. It is a storehouse to validate events that happened in the past. Except it have a few enhancements over your run-of-the-mill data warehouse:
- It is decentralized: ?no single entity controls the flow of information
- It is consensus-based: ?different parties maintain exact copies of the same ledger, so everyone has to agree on the information being added
- It is ‘add-only’: you can’t change a previous entry, you can only add to it
- New information can’t conflict with what’s already on the blockchain
- Anyone on the network can access and replicate the information stored there
These attributes are what allowed the blockchain to act as the distributed accounting platform to record financial transactions for digital currencies like bitcoin.
Blockchain technology circumvents the need for one central administrator, and it can effectively control who access to any data has stored within the shared ledger, giving it remarkable security and hacker-proof properties.
To hack a single block in the chain, a hacker would need to infiltrate every other block in the chain’s chronology — a virtually impossible feat.
