How is Blockchain Technology Revolutionizing Modern Healthcare?

Global Healthcare: An imperative need for change

The healthcare industry is constantly plagued by soaring costs, inefficient solutions and numerous data breaches. These are the biggest (though not only) issues that contemporary healthcare systems are facing, urging a need for improved efficiency, innovation and actionable solutions to drive a solid patient-centric future.?

One of the greatest buzzwords challenging the status quo nowadays is “blockchain”, a term that became predominantly known to the wider public as the ultra-transparent ledger system for cryptocurrency operation, allowing a secure and decentralized record of digital transactions.?

Blockchain in a nutshell

Blockchain is a shared database of peer-to-peer transactions built from transaction blocks stored in a digital ledger, linked together via cryptography. Decentralized blockchains are immutable, meaning that the data entered cannot be reversed, edited or deleted. This technology translates to transactions being transparent, permanently recorded and viewable to anyone, enabling data parity and making manipulation, deletion and falsification of data impossible. Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize multiple domains beyond finance, including healthcare.?

A novel paradigm for healthcare information distribution

Data security is one of the biggest challenges in global health nowadays. The blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by maximizing efficiencies and accelerating innovation, bringing actionable solutions to major healthcare challenges. The deployment of this technology could accelerate the shift to solid patient-centric healthcare models, enabling secure patient information sharing, cost optimization, waste elimination and proof of concept testing.?

The development of efficient healthcare systems and services is inextricably linked with the evolution of relevant information technologies and the ability to record and share healthcare data quickly, safely and inexpensively. Leveraging blockchain technology, key healthcare stakeholders (patients, clinicians, researchers, healthcare organizations, insurers etc.) would benefit from the delivery of integrated healthcare information solutions, driving future medical advancements and precision medicine.

How can blockchain revolutionize the healthcare industry?

The industry is not yet leveraging this groundbreaking opportunity, even though blockchain can become a catalyst for healthcare outcome improvement, cost optimization and better care delivery. Experts from BIS Research estimate that blockchain application in healthcare could result in approximately 100B USD savings per annum by 2025 whereas JP Morgan evaluates that blockchain can save up to 80% of time and costs associated with physician credentialing.

By securely accessing and distributing patient or population health sensitive medical data, healthcare professionals and researchers will come closer than ever before in a context of an open, collaborative, transparent and secure framework that will foster innovation, industry development and collective growth. The data richness, granularity, accuracy and transparency?will be the foundational blocks of success for blockchain applications in healthcare.?The ledger technology allows the secure end-to-end transfer of patient EMRs, improves medical supply chain efficiency and accelerates novel advancements in healthcare research in a rapid and safe manner.

Some early adopters are already deploying solutions powered by blockchain technologies in the fields of smart contracting, patient Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Healthcare Workflow Automation, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), but this is still the beginning of this healthcare (r)evolution.?

What do we need to get there?

Albeit a promising catalyst for multiple healthcare challenges, blockchain will become a gold-standard solution after modern healthcare stakeholders obtain the necessary technical capabilities and ecosystem mindset to drive its collective adoption forward. A patient-centric healthcare future will become feasible only if all healthcare players unite forces to drive the future of healthcare. A worldwide adoption of blockchain technology in healthcare would democratize an immutable, transparent and secure data-sharing practice to improve patient outcomes, efficiency and optimize overall healthcare costs. It is crucial that local governments are aligned with industry in taking bold steps towards the adoption of this cutting-edge technology and deploy its fullest potential to the interest of global health.?

Even though our global healthcare systems are not yet mature for large-scale adoption, the future is bright for the application of blockchain-powered solutions in healthcare, already counting some remarkable successes from pioneers in the field. Ultimately, health ecosystems will soon become well equipped to achieve their primary target: delivering better, more efficient care that will result to improved patient outcomes in the long run.

Marinela Lekka, MSc, MBA Candidate

Healthcare Transformation Specialist