The blockchain is unchanged, decentralized, a digital ledger that helps in peer to peer network by recording transactions through sharing methods.
The blockchain is mainly considered because of its ability to securely, privately, and comprehensively track patient health records, hence potentially transforms healthcare into one of the most secure data management organization in existence. Below are its main roles in the healthcare technology.
Data democratization
Due to the increased number of patients, it becomes harder for providers to collect, store and analyze health information regularly. Blockchain makes it easier by assembling patient's recorded, be it from primary care doctors, specialist doctors that a patient might have visited, comprehensive up to date. Every change in a patient's record is analyzed and stored in a large blockchain. Hence making providers have permanent medical records of patients available, in case of any changes. Therefore, not only is a patient's records easily accessible but also it is cost effective since the cost of data reconciliation is reduced.
Furthermore, all medical records belonging to a patient are stored on a large scale, meaning their information can easily be shared and accessed anywhere with certified access credentials.
Solves security challenges
In the 21st Century, everything is digitalized, so is health data. This makes it almost impossible to avoid cybersecurity. But it is very important for any health information concerning any patient to be kept as a secret, hence health data security must remain a top priority for all health organizations. Blockchain technology tends to solve this integrity based attacks by validating information, hence becoming impossible to change or remove any information. And in case of any changes, with blockchain, it is easy to identify when the changes there is a change, what was changed, and by whom the changes were made.
Furthermore, in the blockchain, medical information is not is not stored in one place, rather it is stored in multiple checkpoints, which improves security hence it is difficult to hack or compromise the system at multiple nodes.
Apart from that, there are increased cases of drug counterfeit. These drugs may be harmful to a person's health. Since transactions in the blockchain are unchanged, it is easy to detect fraudulent drug dealers. However, blockchain companies must register their products in private system for assurance of authenticity and quality is not tampered with.
Patient's privacy
Patient data privacy is strictly regulated, however, where a patient needs to share their medical information with providers, here blockchain creates a hash for both patient ID and each PHI block, which ensures total privacy of a patient data. Hence, covered entities can give out or receive a patient's information without necessarily giving out the identity of the patient. A patient can as well decide who should get access to the information and to what extent.
Patients part of the blockchain can as well monitor their own health records hence in case of any changes, they can easily recognize and inform their providers thus ensuring a high level of privacy.
Data transparency
Blockchain records and stores every transaction done in the system. Every device part of the block also stores this information. Before making any transactions, the system always confirms if the blockchain version coincides with another in the network hence each blockchain user can identify the owner of a particular data at any time, thus total transparency.
The blockchain is yet to be totally embraced by healthcare organizations, but its revolution is coming fast. However, the few health organizations that have gone a step ahead in putting blockchain into the act, have identified its potential roles such as improving security, boosting efficiency and engaging patients. The blockchain is a more promising technology, and caregivers are definitely benefiting from it.