Healthcare industry uses digital methods for maintaining electronic health records.
From the patient’s personal information to diagnostic reports, and doctor’s prescriptions, healthcare organizations, currently use the centralized database for saving data.
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.
Recently, Grindr dating app has disclosed user’s HIV status, sexuality, GPS position, and other personal details to third-parties. Sharing protected health information of patients without their consent can make them feel traumatized. Once the medical data of an individual is generated, data enrichment is done to make the data secure.
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.
Add further information related to the timestamp, demographics, involved stakeholders, and eventually sign and provision the data to be stored on the blockchain.
The completion of the above steps adds value to the data to be stored on the blockchain.
We shall now discuss how health records can be stored on the blockchain. Even more on Blockchain Healthcare, Transactions are completed and identified uniquely: Transactions containing patient’s health records are saved on the blockchain with their unique IDs and patient’s public key. If a healthcare provider wants to access a patient’s public non-identifiable data, the transaction ID is matched, and the information is displayed.
Smart contracts ensure the enforcement of the business rules, compliance requirement, and the user’s will before the data is shared or retrieved.
Stakeholders involved in the patient’s treatment can consume the stored data with the patient’s consent.
Smart contracts contain business logic about who gets what.
Insurance companies could only access the information related to billing and patient’s diagnostic reports, but no other details such as doctor’s notes or prescriptions.
Data Mining and AI in Healthcare Blockchain
But the centralized approach for maintaining the data could hinder the patient’s privacy. Blockchain could be leveraged to bring trust in the clinical trials and medical research process.
As discussed above, the blockchain healthcare platform could use de-identification for hiding the patient’s identity. So, medical research companies could utilize the non-identifiable records to carry out the research activities.
Here’s what benefits could Blockchain bring to the Healthcare Industry
Efficiency:
Blockchain could turn the system highly efficient via real-time processing. It could remove the need for third-party companies, hence, eradicating the delays in accessing the data.