Health Information Exchange is another time-consuming and complicated process that leads to high healthcare cost.
According to 2016 Breach Barometer Report, 450 breach incidents occurred but information was only available for 380 breach incidents and, the breaches resulted in 27,314,647 affected patient records. Could decentralization solve the data security issues in healthcare? Is it possible to save data securely on the blockchain?
Blockchain will have a considerable impact on a patients record sharing, billing, and medical research.
Read further to understand how a blockchain healthcare solution can be built to improve the management of the patients health record.
The medical data includes the doctors prescriptions, X-rays, MRI scans, ultrasound reports, angiography, radiography, endoscopy, and so on. Healthcare data comes in various formats like text, paper, numeric, pictures, videos, digital, or multimedia. IDC reveals healthcare data is expected to grow to 2,314 exabytes by 2020.
Recently, Grindr dating app has disclosed users 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.
A persons identity can be replaced by a hash, an unique numerical value. Replacing the users identity with a hash would make it impossible for the attacker to decode the identity and protected health information (PHI). De-identifying the data will remove details including the patients name, address, social security number and financial information.
Medical data categorized in multiple formats like administrative claim record, clinical registries, biometric data, patient-reported data, or medical imaging should be stored in a structured way.
Organized data enables all healthcare providers to access data efficiently. Even more on Blockchain Healthcare, Health organizations store information on the blockchain: Healthcare vendors can save health records with the patients public key on the blockchain. Smart contracts get triggered to store the information provided by doctors, diagnostic centers, or health insurance companies on the blockchain.
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.
Similarly, physicians in the healthcare centers could access relevant information such as the patients historical health records, age, and diagnostic reports.
Patients would have ownership of the data, i.e., they can decide what information to be shared with which entity using smart contracts.
Data Mining and AI in Healthcare Blockchain
Healthcare data nowadays is generated using different technologies like AI, IoT, or ML. The generated data can be used for multiple purposes, including disease prevention and cure, drug development, and clinical trials.
Heres 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.