Blockchain Solutions for Healthcare: 5 Key Use Cases and trends of 2023
With the advent of blockchain in 2009, healthcare industries seem to be reinventing themselves. First used in bitcoin cryptocurrency, Blockchain technology has proved to be a revolutionary technology. It refers to decentralized ledger technology where no single entity has control and access to the transactions. This particular property of the blockchain ensures the immutability of the network especially in cryptocurrency markets. Though cryptocurrency is the first and foremost application of blockchain, its application is not limited to the industry and is being employed in various other industries as well. One such industry is the healthcare industry.
The Healthcare industry is one of the first advocates and employers of blockchain technology. Its decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture features come in handy for patient management, digital health record keeping, counterfeit medicine detection, and many more. Top trends and potential use cases of 2023 of these blockchain in healthcare applications are :
Vaccine Passports and Digital Health Passes
Blockchain technology is revolutionizing the healthcare business by the second. Distributed ledger is extremely beneficial in securely managing and handling health care and patient records. It is extremely fundamental in keeping track of public health data, maintains reports of active and recovered patients and is instrumental in providing the best health services in pandemics, epidemics, and even endemics. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic for example, health systems across the world experienced challenges in data management such as management and synchronization of huge volumes of data, authenticity of patients' data, point of origin, etc. Hospitals could not communicate between themselves, individuals, and organizations and share data to provide the best patient healthcare. Blockchain can help resolve all these challenges while providing a secure solution for patient care.
Counterfeit Medicine Identification
The Pharmaceuticals and Medicine development sector is one of the most unorganized sectors with infinite stakeholders and unlimited organizational involvement. With such a complex network of manufacturing, distribution, and sales, it becomes difficult for companies to maintain transparency, and security while inhibiting the manufacturing and distribution of fraudulent drugs and medicines. Blockchain technology is a solution to these challenges and is being actively pursued for the immutability and transparency it provides to the network. The cloud-based, blockchain-powered architecture ensures traceability to materials, product manufacturing, logistics, patient records and thus mitigating the risk of counterfeits and frauds. The network accommodates easy identification of activities through tagging and keeps electronic drug records that are easily made available via a smart contract as part of Hyperledger Blockchain.
Reinvented Medical Research and Development (R&D) Processes
Blockchain technology has also opened up avenues when it comes to streamlining medical research and development. One of the reasons it has been able to do so is because patient privacy in healthcare institutions is of utmost priority and no other technology protects it as well as blockchain does. In medical research and development, blockchain ledgers focus on user confidentiality when there is a data exchange between two medical institutions, hospitals, or colleges. Every entity that is part of the network can access records, diagnosis, and treatment thus improving health care services at large.
Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs)
NFTs in healthcare are not as unheard of as they were a decade ago. Blockchain architecture of NFTs is being preferred as they warrant security and privacy all the while ensuring a certain level of control for the patient over their own records. This is contrary to current health systems which fail to address this lack of confidentiality.
An excellent example of NFTs in healthcare is the tokenization of the personal data of clients who are willing to monetize their patient data and earn from sharing their data with research scientists and medical practitioners.
Blockchain in Contact Tracing
South Korea was one of the first countries to employ blockchain for contact tracing. At the peak of the pandemic, the technology was used by visitors to Jeju island to identify themselves via a blockchain network that issued a certificate. A digital fingerprint authentication was provided by the application and the trend caught on. Even today, there are many contact tracing applications that employ blockchain for its immutability and transparency.
Conclusion
Healthcare providers, organizations, and enterprises are investing heavily in Blockchain Development Services. As new avenues open up, the scope and demand for Custom Blockchain Development Company have also increased exponentially. It is safe to say that blockchain technology is going to be the best and most popular way to future-proof healthcare businesses and patient care.
