Blockchain in Healthcare – Importance, Application, Benefits & Future

Here is our thought process on blockchain in healthcare.

• Blockchain is a powerful tech.
• It is the savior of the digital health tech industry.
• Health tech startups are considering blockchain solutions as a perfect business opportunity.
• Blockchain is going to fill every gap in healthcare facilities or organizations’ data management concerns.

And this blog has covered everything related to it.

So, let’s understand it in detail.

The importance of blockchain in healthcare

The ultimate goal of the blockchain in healthcare is to protect and exchange patient medical, financial, and personal data through various healthcare ecosystems such as hospitals, clinics, laboratories, imaging centers and much more.

The most significant factor about the blockchain is that it effortlessly enables the healthcare ecosystem to manage the patients’ data without adding any complexity like inaccuracy and data breaches.

Apart from that, here are the other aspects that showcase the importance of blockchain in healthcare.

Data storage and tracking

Digital health tech contains a huge amount of the patients’ data. Thus, it is essential for them to manage that data without any accessibility concerns.

Using blockchain tech in healthcare, one can easily store and track the patients’ medical data without any hassle.

Data sharing

A seamless and secure data exchange between two health tech ecosystems is not an easy task.

Blockchain holds the ability to make the healthcare data exchange faster, secure, and accurate along with accessibility.

Revenue and transaction settlements

Managing revenue cycle, transaction settlements and supply chain management is the most time-consuming aspect of any healthcare ecosystem.

Blockchain makes the entire revenue and transaction settlements streamlined along with real-time visibility and accessibility.

Enhancing the data security

Blockchain is well-known for its comprehensive and powerful data security.

And we both are familiar with how digital health tech is confronting data breaches every day.

To avoid that, numerous healthcare entities such as clinical trial rooms, pharmaceutical companies, and large-scale hospitals are using blockchain technology in their system.

Identifying the data errors

In healthcare, data errors sometimes result in a life-threatening situation for the patients.

Blockchain has the potential to identify the severe errors in the data while at the same time alerting the healthcare companies about the data inaccuracies.

From the above facts, we can safely conclude that blockchain technology plays a significant role in making the lives of patients and care providers along with reducing the costs for the entire healthcare ecosystem.

Okay. So, let’s explore the 4 major applications of blockchain in healthcare

Using blockchain technology, healthcare ecosystems can store, manage, and exchange data at multiple locations in real-time without any data security and confidentiality concerns.

Applications of the blockchain in healthcare

Healthcare supply chain management

The medical supply chain is a headache for the healthcare industry as it is a time-consuming and costly procedure.

Using blockchain-driven health tech solutions for the medical supply chain management, the healthcare industry can effortlessly avoid the higher cost, tedious procedures, and can focus on the other key responsibilities.

Benefits:

• Real-time visibility and transparency of every supply
• Makes supply chain management more efficient and flexible
• Secure and accurate transaction settlements
• Streamline and end-to-end communication
• No need to worry about the data safety

Patient data management

In healthcare, you can’t avoid the mistakes in the patient’s medical data as it can create some serious and life-threatening situations for them.

Don’t believe it? Here is the proof.

Medical errors result in 251,000 deaths annually in the United States, making it the third leading cause of death!

Thus, blockchain is used in the EMR/EHR systems and other health tech systems that contain the patients’ medical data to avoid medical errors.

Blockchain-based EMR/EHR systems store the patients’ crucial data in such a way that is easily accessible to any healthcare professionals in a network without any inaccuracies.

Benefits:

• Can lower the death caused by the medical errors
• Reliable patients data
• Seamless data exchange
• Comprehensive accessibility

In clinical trial

In clinical trials, healthcare professionals frequently struggle with false results due to inaccuracy and poor data validation.

Blockchain streamlines the data validation process for the clinical trial performers so that they can achieve their research goals in the desired time without compromising the expenses.

Benefits:

• It strengthens the clinical trial results
• Can avoid the fake results
• Reduces the expenses of the clinical trials
• Improves the trial outcomes

To strengthen the IoT data security

IoT is taking place in remote patient monitoring.

Hence to improve the patients’ outcomes without being in the live-in person visit, secure and accurate data exchange from the IoT to other health tech ecosystems is a crucial task.

The blockchain has a strong security solution that only permits the authorized user to access those real-time patient data.

Benefits:

• Secure data exchange
• Can enhance the patient outcomes
• IoT also helps in the real-time visibility of the medical supply chain

Blockchain is constructing its place in the healthcare

Blockchain is proving itself as a valuable asset in the healthcare ecosystem.

And here are the proofs.

• A more secure and reliable solution
• Cost-effective
• Faster and accurate tech solution
• Improves the productivity
• Seamless data exchange
• Offers scalability and transparency
• Potential to reduce the overall cost of the healthcare ecosystem
• Reduces the data errors
• Offers real-time visibility in the supply chain
• Accurate data validation capabilities

From that, we can safely say that the blockchain is breaking the multiple obstacles for the healthcare industry with its state-of-the-art tech solutions.

Blockchain in healthcare has a bright future ahead

We have discussed some of the applications of blockchain technology in the healthcare ecosystem.

However, the use cases are still in the earlier phases of the development and improvement process.

But, as per our expertise and thought process about blockchain technology, it is going to be revolutionary for the healthcare industry in terms of patient data and supply chain management.

To achieve that, they must focus on the healthcare app development process of blockchain-based health tech solutions.

As a result, it will enable digital health providers to achieve their business goals without having any tech and security concerns.