Article
What the Healthcare Industry Needs to Adopt Blockchain
Blockchain technology will not only revolutionize medical records. It will also create a patient-centric healthcare industry, dramatically different from what exists today. As discussed in previous posts, blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger of transactions. It records data in a way that prevents hacking and altering of data. This is achieved by duplicating transactions and dispersing them to “nodes” across the network.
“Blockchain possess the potential to revolutionize the healthcare industry by placing the patient at the center of the ecosystem. It amplifies interoperability, privacy, and security of health data,” write Vic Gupta and Harish Nanda, the Executive Vice President of Digital & AI and Chief Architect of Coforge, in ET Healthworld.com. “The technology is set to equip [the] healthcare industry with a more advanced Health Information Exchange (HIE) model. This could genuinely transform electronic medical records, making them significantly more secure, efficient, and disintermediated.”
However, the healthcare industry has been slow to adopt blockchain due to the sensitivity of the data handled.
Healthcare Blockchain Relies on Hybrid Technology Stacks
Because the healthcare industry needs to protect highly sensitive patient data, its blockchain technology must rely on a hybrid technology stack. This is necessary rather than a system in which data is delivered across blockchain nodes. This is according to Stuart Hanson, CEO of Avaneer Health.
“Instead, this technology can be used to help index the complex industry sources of data across a network. It makes this data more fluid and, therefore, valuable,” he told Healthcare IT News. “In other words, we need to figure out a delicate balance between blockchain and other technology components within the stack. This is in order to preserve the key value added from blockchain while making the entire system robust and optimized for the healthcare use cases.”
How Multiple-Signature Contracts Will Provide Solutions to the Healthcare Blockchain
According to Xudong Huang, a researcher at Harvard Medical School who was interviewed by Managed Healthcare Executive, healthcare blockchain is valuable to patients. This is because it simultaneously provides them with data security and data ownership. This is in comparison to traditional data management and security systems. He discussed this in a 2019 paper.
Blockchain-based systems would require patients to authorize retrieval of their data through what Huang and coauthors call multiple-signature, or “multisig,” contracts in healthcare blockchains. Using these signatures, both patient and healthcare provider use separate private keys to access the patient’s medical record in the network. While this means the provider can’t access the patient’s data without permission, it also means that only providers—not patients—can change the patient’s data.
While siloing data in such a way can create obstacles for big data analytics, researchers and healthcare companies often rely on these analytics to create solutions in the healthcare industry. However, Huang thinks it may actually help.
“An easy solution for this is any de-identified patients’ data can be released to a public database for easy access,” he told the publication. In other words, blockchain would allow wider, simplified access of data among vetted parties on the blockchain.
As the blockchain brings major solutions to healthcare, the industry will need to learn to adjust to a new, patient-centric network. Other industries will find themselves in a similar position. Has your organization prepared to adopt blockchain technology?
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Resources
Gupta, Vic and Nanda, Harish. (24 March 2022). Blockchain Disrupting the Healthcare Ecosystem. ET HealthWorld.com.
Siwicki, Bill. (3 March 2022). Healthcare blockchain leader talks challenges and trends in DLT. Healthcare IT News.
Kaltwasser, Jared. (8 February 2022). Is Healthcare Ready For Blockchain? Managed Healthcare Executive.
Tuesday, 5th April 2022