Blockchain technology, a powerful and integral part of decentralized applications, has been gaining a great deal of attention over the last year. However, it is still not very clear how blockchain will be used in the healthcare industry. Although it is changing the healthcare industry, experts are still debating the extent that it will do so.
The main idea behind the development of blockchain technology was to create an open, decentralized database that could manage transactions between two parties without the need for a central authority or trusted third party. When making transactions using blockchain, a peer-to-peer network is used to update and maintain a shared list of records.
This results in a distributed ledger, which can only be changed by the consensus of all of the network participants. Once all network participants agree to a new transaction, that record is added to the shared ledger. The network itself is continually updated, therefore changing the state of the blockchain. The distributed nature of the blockchain means that it does not require a trusted third party for communication between two parties, and this makes it great for the healthcare industry, which is heavily regulated and regulated with multiple parties.
Health Care Companies’ Interest in Blockchain
Healthcare companies are expected to spend over $8.3 billion on blockchain by 2027. The market for healthcare blockchain solutions is growing over 70% a year, due to the huge benefits it offers.
There are many benefits that blockchain can provide in the healthcare industry. Blockchain has already been implemented in several different sectors of the healthcare industry, from food safety to payments to supply chains. For instance, blockchain technology is being used by the medical device industry to ensure the unique identity of a medical device currently on the market and to prevent fake devices. There are also several companies in the healthcare space that are using blockchain technology for their own internal purposes.
A great example of this is Gem, a company that uses blockchain technology to make medical records more secure. Gem also created a separate product called Gem Health, which is a decentralized health care ecosystem. In this ecosystem, developers can use blockchain technology and digital assets to track healthcare-related data, and patients can use it to create smart contracts that allow them to monetize their own data.
The Challenges of Blockchain for Health Care:
With the prevalence of blockchain technology becoming more widespread, many companies that are interested in using it have started to do so. However, blockchain is not an easy concept to understand and even less so to implement within existing healthcare systems due to the vast number of interwoven pieces.
The most difficult part of implementing blockchain for the healthcare industry is its inability to scale. Within the current healthcare system, there are many different types of information, such as clinical data on each patient, laboratory data, and information on treatments and prescriptions. The sheer amount of data in the healthcare industry is overwhelming enough without adding blockchain to the mix. Therefore, in order to implement blockchain technology within health care systems, it will need to be able to scale. Another challenge that the healthcare industry will have to overcome concerns privacy and security. With the rise of data breaches and cyberattacks, information that is stored on a blockchain is not secure from these threats.
Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs):
In order to overcome the challenges that have been faced by blockchain technology, it is necessary for the industry to look at new ways of implementing blockchain within its systems. One option that is being explored is the use of Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). A DAO is a business model where a computer program manages an organization and carries out transactions on its own. It uses smart contracts to facilitate, verify and enforce the performance of unique business activities without the need for human actors. By creating a DAO, the healthcare industry can implement blockchain without requiring it to scale in order to handle the complex information that is released and the blockchain’s inability to keep data private.
Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) allow for the development of blockchain solutions that do not require a trusted authority or centralized management. If a healthcare company wants to integrate blockchain into its system, it can create a DAO and place it under its own management.
Cross Chain Portability:
Another option is the implementation of a cross-chain component in the blockchain. The healthcare industry relies heavily on data, and a good place to start would be with the most common piece of data: medical records. Currently, there are different standards that are used to manage medical records, which makes it difficult to combine them across different networks. By adding a cross-chain component to blockchain technology, data can be shared using one system and therefore make it much simpler to manage medical records between different parties. Bitcoin Prime is an innovative platform that provides solutions for the healthcare industry with bitcoin.
Blockchain Offers Huge Benefits to the Healthcare Sector
There are many benefits that blockchain can provide to the healthcare industry. From making records more secure to incentivizing patients and their information, blockchain can provide a great solution for the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is already seeing blockchain technology being implemented in their systems, but with the fast-paced nature of this technology, it is important that they continue to look at new ways of implementing it. If they are able to create an efficient system that solves current problems, then this could be huge for the health care system.
