Humans are ready to spend a skyrocketing cost for their own health or even towards the near and dears. Today the Healthcare industry is plagued by exponentially rising the cost of hospitals, insufficient practices as well as breaching the patient data or records. These expensive problems are impelling towards an innovative, immutable solution.

Recently the Blockchain technology has shown a remarkable acceptance in various market and sectors by integrating it’s abilities to their operations. Blockchain technology has received maximum focused interaction in financial industry. Today healthcare sector also shows its beginning and acceptance towards the change. The public healthcare, medical research and drug manufactures in pharmaceutical sector, this report aims to illustrate possible influences, goals and potentials connected to this disruptive technology.

Blockchain will be a big bet on Healthcare industry which can cater to multiple usable applications. The distributed ledger maintenance facility can store, secure and transfer the patient records, manage medicine supply, help medicine research firms to uncover the genetics.

Let us check about some of the Useful application of Health care use cases through Blockchain:

Securing Patient Medical Record

Medical records are one of the important and implicated record for a patient. Keeping the records data safe and secure is the most prevalent Blockchain healthcare application. Security of these records is a major issue in the healthcare industry. Data breaches for the patients is a highly risky issue, this is as similar to the stealing the data of any banking information.

Blockchain’s in-built ability to keep an incorruptible, immutable, auditable, decentralized and transparent log of all patient data makes it a technology universally accepted for all security applications. A Private Blockchain masking the identity of any individual with complex and secure codes that can protect the sensitivity of medical data. The decentralized and distributed ledger maintenance nature of the technology also allows patients, Patients near relative or caretaker, doctors and healthcare providers to share the same information in a near to real-time and without compromising the safely and security features.

Reduction and Prevention of Costly Mistake

Miscommunication, or wrong communication between medical professionals always costs to the patients and creates a havoc for the healthcare industry. To rectify the mistake always adds an additional cost to the patient. In addition to the miscommunication the time that lost in the process of obtaining and accessing to the correct patient's medical records exhausts all resources and creates a delay in patient care. Blockchain’s distributed technology helps in keeping the patients’ medical records safe, audited and easy access to the identified individual which offers a faster and correct cure procedures for the illness. 

The consortium based Blockchain and the decentralized, nature of the technology creates one ecosystem of patient data that can be quickly and efficiently referred by doctors, hospitals, pharmacists and anyone directly involved in process of treatment. In this way, the Blockchain can lead to a faster diagnosis and personalized care can be taken for patients. 

Pharma Drugs Manufacturing

Medicines are made with chemical compositions and these are only known to a medically certified professional. Any person who is not directly involved in the process will really know nothing about the composition. Then it becomes a very critical process, when an unknowledgeable individual will be given a task to take care of these drugs. These individuals can easily tamper the drugs. 

Blockchain has an in-built functionality of transparency and through decentralized ledger maintenance can seriously help the pharma industries to have a virtually guaranteed information made available for usage. Once a ledger for a drug is created, it will mark the details attached.

Pharma Drugs Supply

As we are aware the drugs are manufactured and then transported to different locations as per need. During the process of transportation it passes through multiple level of checking and multiple people get involved. These people may or may not be aware of the hazardous effect of the drugs and the precautionary measure that are required to be implied on that. More over today the manufactures spend a good amount of investments to reduce the implications and the effects on their drugs.

Blockchain based smart contract enabled distributed ledger technology can save the information of the packets. Once it is saved in to the network, then the supply chain always auto update the location, persons involved in transportation. This will give a virtually guaranteed information about the drug and a legitimacy of chemical composition.  

Lifesaving Drug Availability

Life !!!, It’s a gift of God which we got. We can do and go to any extent to save life. Lifesaving drugs are very much essential for the patients who are in need. Many times it is observed that the drugs are available but the location of pharmacists are not known or hidden somewhere. People run around to find the location and availability of drugs, there by a lot of time is just spent. It also happened where the patients die without getting the prescribed drugs.

Blockchain based smart contract enabled distributed ledger technology can save the information of drugs and the supplier in the packets (blocks). Once it is saved in to the network, then the information is shared over the authenticated participants, always auto update the location, availability of stocks. This will give a virtually guaranteed information about the drug and a legitimacy of availability.

Breakthroughs in Genetics

The future of genetics need to improve, which will help in evolution and remediating the past hereditary illness/diseases. Once this dream is fulfilled the science will be lifted to an unimagined level and create a stable financial reality. Today the cost of identifying genetic illness is very high.

Blockchain will be a perfect solution fit for this growing industry as it can safely in-house the billions of genetic data points. It will also create a marketplace where people can sell their encrypted genetic information to others. Scientist can do the research work to remediate the unforeseen virus/ bacteria affects. A valuable information can be stored in a secure manner and create a wider database, giving scientists access to valuable data faster than ever before. 

Way forward

Today, Blockchain promises to provide the safe, sharing of near to real-time data between providers, payers and patients in the healthcare industry. The technology automates the data verification capabilities, and able to resolve the trust issues related to pulling data from multiple sources. This application shows a promise for solving issues related to distribution of data and nationwide interoperability. Usage of Blockchain in healthcare is expected to rejuvenate and reinvent the ecosystem in limitless ways to benefit the patient and advancements in treatments, outcomes, security and costs. Technology has the potential to transform healthcare delivery, placing patient at the centre of the healthcare ecosystems and the capability to increase the security, privacy, and interoperability of healthcare data. It’s envisaged that, this technology is expected to provide a new model of patient information exchanges by making immutable electronic medical records with more efficient, disintermediated, and secure. One of core offerings of Blockchain, that it make a no-brainer for supply chains across industries with its immutable, time-stamped, tamper-proof ledger, accessible for all or pre-approved participants.

In this review paper we’re viewing the thriving affect and step through how Blockchain service in providing efficiency, security and privacy for patient care.