Blockchain Technology: How Is Blockchain Helping Healthtech To Enhance Services

Blockchain Technology: How is Blockchain Helping Healthtech to Enhance Services

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by Alex Noah — 3 years ago in Blockchain Technology 3 min. read
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Blockchain technology could increase trust, collaboration, and traceability as well as auditability in the healthcare sector.

Blockchain has many applications in healthcare.

Ledger technology helps healthcare researchers uncover genetic code by allowing secure transfers of patient information, monitoring the supply chain of medication, and facilitating the transfer of patient records.

To streamline the approval and monitoring of medical devices after they are released to the market, regulatory agencies will likely demand that blockchain technology be used.



Blockchain will accelerate the evaluation and acquisition of data from patients and device performance data during clinical trials. Blockchain could also be used to prevent data manipulation and falsification during clinical trials.

Blockchain Helping Healthtech to Enhance Services

Medical Research

A centralized repository that stores clinical trials results and patient outcomes for new medicines could significantly improve patient care.

The blockchain’s clinical trial and outcome records are immutable, time-stamped, and can be accessed at any time. This could help to eliminate data spying, result swapping, fraud, inaccuracy, and unethical reporting.

Blockchains can be used to share patient outcomes with greater ease, which could help to mobilize new and innovative research efforts (with patient consent). With patient consent, it would be possible to release patient data more widely, which could lead to an amazing collaboration between researchers and participants.
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Product Design

Sometimes, electronic and paper data are combined to support the development of medical devices.

The Device Master Record (DMR), and Design History Files (DHF) contain a variety of documents such as requirements, design plans, and risk management. These papers will be converted from paper to electronic format using blockchain technology.

This technology includes electronic signature and traceability capabilities. Blockchain technology could help solve one of the most difficult problems in product development: managing clinical trial data. For example, data from clinical trials.

Security

There were approximately 176 million data breaches of medical records between 2009 and 2017. Blockchain’s secure properties can greatly increase the security of medical records.

Every person has both a public identity (or key) and a private one that can only be used for the indicated time.

Hackers could not target individual users to steal sensitive information. Blockchain technology may allow medical data to be provided with an immutable audit trace.
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Drug Development and Supply Chain Integrity

Blockchain could improve transparency and traceability in healthcare supply chains by providing both the complete picture and details for every transaction.

To improve supply chain integrity, companies like IBM, Walmart, UPS, and UPS already use blockchain technology.

If supply data is stored in a blockchain, patients can get real-time information about any drug’s journey from manufacturing to arrival at a pharmacy.

Blockchains can be used to convert disjointed data fragments from one company into the entire life history of any resource, regardless of whether it is a patient’s medical record or a medication traveling through the supply chain.

Commercial

Many business models of medical device companies combine consumables with equipment usage. This can lead to a sliding price drop for consumables that is dependent on the volume.

It can be hard to track. Special arrangements with Group Purchasing Organizations or large healthcare providers may allow for chargebacks and refunds of consumables.

To automate, clear, and settle transactions in the medical device value chain, smart contracts, and Blockchain technology could be used by manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors.
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Case Management

Blockchains can improve patient management. Once a patient has seen a doctor, a treatment plan can be added to the blockchain ledger.

A smart contract can then be created by combining all the pieces of the patient’s case management. The smart contract will outline the patient’s treatment goals and the criteria that the smart contract uses to track and evaluate the patient’s progress.

The blockchain can provide historical data about how and when care was delivered to patients.


The patient’s data is collected from wearable devices and social media platforms and posted to the blockchain ledger. This adds another layer of utility. Smart contracts can also be used to track patients’ progress towards their health goals.

Preventive measures for medical equipment

Without compromising privacy or enforcement, machines can communicate operational data to those responsible for regulating it with blockchain applications.

The unit can share data such as photos, treatment types, and other information about patients with it. However, this is only for compliance auditing and monitoring. Blockchain may store important service records, depending on the purpose of the system.
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Remote Monitoring and Mobile Health Apps

Mobile health apps are becoming more important as technology advances. The safe storage of electronic medical records (EMRs), which can be shared with medical personnel, was discovered on a blockchain network.

This allows the data to be used for home and self-monitoring purposes. This area is especially vulnerable to malware, particularly root flaws that can allow hackers to gain the patient’s private keys.

Alex Noah

Alex is senior editor of The Next Tech. He studied International Communication Management at the Hague University of Applied Sciences.

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