What is blockchain?

In recent years, blockchain has become a somewhat of a buzzword in the news and on social media. In a relatively short time frame, its ideals and potential capabilities have become an attraction to many, even those who lack any interest in technology. Due to the intricacies of the technology, I won’t attempt to explain how it works. There are many excellent explanations available on the web that’ll do it better justice than I could.

Blockchain created mass hysteria within the general public during the winter of 2017 when the prices of various ‘coins’ reached their peak. The most popular implementation of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, was selling for $17,000 per unit during this time. Everyone and their grandparents were trying to invest in this exciting new technology, pushing the technology firmly into the mainstream territory. However, a year or so later, the blockchain price bubble has well and truly deflated. As of the time of writing, the price of Bitcoin is at a comparatively lowly price of approximately $3,400 and it is not stable neither going up.
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Rise and fall of the price of Bitcoin

So was blockchain a flash in the pan? Contrary to the fall in the price of cryptocurrencies, companies across various industries are continuing to invest in the technology. Beyond payment systems, companies are conducting R&D into how they can leverage the blockchain for their own industry. A look at the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance website is a testament to this.
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Some of the member companies of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance

Many of the companies investing in blockchain are financial and technology based. In this post, we are going to explore how it can be used as part of a strategy to improve the healthcare industry through the use of disruptive technologies.
Applications of blockchain in healthcare

While blockchain might not be the cure to all of the problems and inefficiencies in the healthcare industry, it does have the potential to greatly enhance operational processes for organisations. As with all new technologies, we will have to see if this one will be able to meet its full potential. Here are some of the potential use cases:
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Ensuring supply chain integrity

The sale of counterfeit drugs is a problem that is on the rise. With the rise of the internet, it is becoming even more difficult to regulate and control the source of drug supplies. In the US, the sale of counterfeit drugs cost businesses more than $200 billion annually and accounts for the loss of more than 750,000 jobs.[3] In addition to contributing to the loss of incomes and jobs, they also pose a public health hazard.

Because of how blockchain works, it will offer full transparency into the full journey of pharmaceutical products from the point of manufacture to consumers’ hands. Since all transactions are recorded in the blockchain, it makes it very easy to detect any foul play. DHL and Accenture have been working on a blockchain-based project to address this problem.
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Fighting insurance and billing fraud

Insurance fraud is a major concern for organisations in the healthcare industry. This results from excessive billing, billing for non-performed services or the falsification of patients’ medical conditions to justify unnecessary treatments. In the US, it is estimated that Medicare fraud adds up to $60 billion a year.[5] This results in more expensive healthcare costs for everyone else.

Blockchain systems can help to counter these kinds of frauds by requiring providers and patients to enter their information and data to be verified, recorded and stored on the blockchain. Blockchain systems could help to eliminate the need for middlemen by automating the majority of claims and payment processing, reducing the administrative costs and time for providers and consumers.

Recently, Capital One has announced a collaborative effort with Gem Health, a provider of enterprise blockchain application platforms, to develop a blockchain-based system for this purpose.
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Managing medical data

Blockchain systems can be leveraged to ensure the secure storage and transfer of very sensitive medical data. Medicalchain is a company that is attempting to implement such an idea.

It is a platform where doctors, hospitals, laboratories, pharmacists and insurers can request permission to access a patient’s record to access and interact with medical records. However, patients will be able to fully control who can view their records, how much they are privy to and for how long. Because of how the technology works, every interaction is transparent, auditable and secure, and will be recorded as a transaction on the blockchain.
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The records would also be more secure than if they were on a normal server as the data can only be accessed via a patient’s private key, which only they possess. One of the biggest challenges in this industry is how to share the appropriate data with the various stakeholders. Blockchain allows this. Medicalchain’s platform will facilitate the instantaneous transfer of data as every member of the same distributed network would have access to the same data, permitted they were granted permission to do so.

The examples above are just some of the use cases that companies have managed to come up with so far to apply blockchain technology in the healthcare industry. There are bound to be more use cases in the future as the technology is still in its infancy.

However, if applied properly by the relevant players in this industry, blockchain can be used as a strategy to optimise many of the laborious tasks and processes that currently exist as well as enhancing the interoperability, security, and immutability of electronic health records systems.

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Note: This document with all the information in it is shared here to boost our knowledge of blockchain and crypto ecosystem, the original document can be found in document source, I have no ownership right over the document.

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