Recent pandemic mandated involvement of masses in mainstream healthcare ecosystem which has accelerated the shift of healthcare industry towards digitization and development of innovation driven healthcare service delivery. And diving deep in this trend will reveal decentralization at its core, shifting focus onto more of patient-centric healthcare delivery. Some of the parameters that are driving this transformation is ready-access to data in transparent manner and cost-effectiveness, certainly these factors is evolving how people interact with healthcare system.
Health-care Industry Snapshot
| Total Worth of Global Healthcare Industry (in 2018) | $8.45 Trillion |
| Estimated Worth of Healthcare Industry (by 2022) | $10 Trillion |
| Percentage of people not having access to Healthcare (Globally) | 50% |
| Doctors stating emerging tech would reduce cost & burden on healthcare system | 66% |
| Healthcare organizations already implementing emerging tech in their facility | 60% |
*Source: policyadvice.net
Blockchain enabling secured data sharing and simultaneous access with multiple users, Healthcare industry can be overhauled with Blockchain from e-health records to supply chain management, insurance settlements to digital monitoring.
Application in Healthcare
- Electronic Health Records: Blockchain based Electronic Health Records, will provide a single source of all medical record and history of patients, which would enable healthcare providers in diagnosis and treatment resulting in better and enhanced delivery of healthcare services to masses.
- Supply Chain Management: Blockchain can bring in the innovativeness in streamlining major supply chain challenges faced by healthcare industry. Blockchain can help establish the authenticity of medicine taking out counterfeits from market, and can establish traceability of prescribed drugs. With supply chain documentation to be shifted onto decentralized record it will reduce costs and time delays.
- Insurance and Claim Settlements: With shared digital medical record of patients, insurance claims can be verified and settled automatically more efficiently without any human or technical errors.
- Remote Monitoring: Given the recent trend of remote monitoring solutions driving the digital health ecosystem enabling healthcare providers to gain vital medical information about patient health, it has become necessary to secure monitoring devices and the data generated. Blockchain cryptography will secure devices and data with allowed access only to permitted parties. Blockchain decentralized feature will allow monitoring devices to interact on their own with each other, to be leveraged during emergency situations.
Scaling blockchain for healthcare
Blockchain in healthcare is rather a new concept and it has rightly stepped on its evolutionary path. Healthcare industry with careful approach is evaluating implementation of this merging technology in step-by-step manner. Healthcare organizations along with other industry stakeholders needs to evaluate creating the required technical infrastructure and its seamless integration with existing technology.
Certainly, blockchain has opened by wide-range of possibilities for healthcare industry. With rapidly evolving technology landscape, healthcare industry should take governmental support to plot and organize blockchain ecosystem by establishing industry wide blockchain framework to help navigate all concerned organizations.
