Blockchain software applications in healthcare business

Identity thefts, spamming and financial data crimes, the patient’s data can be misused for many reasons as patients don’t have control over their data.

2017 Ponemon Cost of Data Breach Study says that the cost of data breaches for healthcare organizations is estimated to be $380 per record.

Blockchain will have a considerable impact on a patient’s record sharing, billing, and medical research.

Read further to understand how a blockchain healthcare solution can be built to improve the management of the patient’s health record.

Data generation

To integrate blockchain in healthcare, first, we need to understand the scope of data and where and how it is being generated.

At every stage of medical treatment, whether it is a consultation, diagnosis, or surgery, healthcare companies generate sensitive and crucial medical data.

Electronic health records(EHR) contain exploitable information like name, address, place where you work, prescribed medicines, number of doctor visits and payment methods. A Medical record also contains sensitive protected health information like HIV diagnoses, cancer diagnoses, or psychological conditions.

Data Enrichment- Before storing data to the blockchain

Data Enrichment is a process to add value to enhance the data quality.

Patient’s health records need to be accurate, secure, understandable, time-stamped, and structured.

Storing unstructured data could lead to inconsistencies, delays in the treatment process, and inefficiencies.

It is essential to implement the following three steps to clean and secure the data before storing it on the blockchain.

Blockchain can eliminate the risks associated with centralization of data by storing the digital health records across multiple nodes within the network. Even more on Blockchain Healthcare, Patients can share their private key with health organizations: Blockchain healthcare solution can never reveal the patient’s identifiable information until they provide their private key. Patients can share the private key with the health organizations if required. Data would always remain non-identifiable to healthcare providers without the secret key. It is similar to how cryptocurrencies are stored on the blockchain, where the owner with the private key can only access it.

A blockchain can either be a public or a private blockchain. Since an user identity will not be visible in this solution, a public blockchain could also be used.

Once the data is stored, it can be consumed by different healthcare blockchain vendors using smart contracts.

Smart contracts will ensure a transparent, conflict-free exchange of the information. In case, the user denies to exchange the information; no one could access the patient’s health records.

Blockchain healthcare solution could also enable healthcare research companies to use health records for research purposes without affecting the patient’s privacy. Read further to understand how

Data Mining and AI in Healthcare Blockchain

For example, if a research company wants to get the analytics for HIV disease, smart contracts would enable them to access details like HIV type, most-affected city or country, age group, and gender while hiding the personal information of patients.

Here’s what benefits could Blockchain bring to the Healthcare Industry

System Interoperability:
The inability to exchange healthcare records could lead to delays in treatment. But blockchain could alleviate this problem by decentralizing the data. Everyone within the healthcare network could access a transparent, yet immutable ledger while having the ownership of data.

Back to Top