Hello Steemians,

This is my submission for the Steemit Crypto Academy task by professor @yohan2on and this week its about Blockchain Technology in the Healthcare industry. Its such an important topic as healthcare is something that is part of everyone's life and this time its even more important because of the pandemic.

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Task- Research and Discuss the potential applications of Blockchain in the Health care industry

Before we know the involvement and implementation of blockchain technology in healthcare we need to understand first what this Blockchain is and how it works.

Overview of Blockchain

Blockchain is a new age technology and its getting more attention from various sectors. After all, it provides transparency because it works on distributed nature which is accessible to every authorized user and even in the public domain if it's required. Data is stored in blocks and these blogs are connected with one and another so the entire information is stored in a way that it is impossible to manipulate and if someone tries then it is very easy to track it. Even if any modification is made on the data then it will again require validation before getting added to the block and this is how this technology is so secure in terms of vast data management and maintaining transparency.

The best part about Loughton is that it is capable of managing data in scale and whatever is recorded on the chain will never be deleted. This is an immutable network and because of this many sectors are adopting this technology and protocol to bring fair practices and transparency in place.
Blockchain is a decentralized and online distributed ledger network that stores data and its secured by cryptography. Encryption is another important that is quite an important feature and it makes information accessible only to authorized parties.

The traditional system is not scalable and not immutable as well however with blockchain such functions come default and once data is added in blockchain then it will never get deleted so industries can reply on this technology completely.

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Healthcare is one of the sectors that has been growing and adopting more technology. Its required because with the help of technology things can be done faster and that too with the least human intervention. Even data management is another aspect that requires a transparent and scalable system to manage. Information is precious and its very important to keep it secure from unauthorized persons but hackers are so advanced that they figure out some ways to breach the security and perform data theft. Despite using highly advanced security we have seen so many instances of hacking in healthcare.

I remember one of the incidents that happened in Singapore in July 2018. I was deployed in one of the projects in SingHealth at that time. There was a cyber-attack and data for more than 160,000 was stolen by the hackers. This is the news article for the same. In this attack data of prime minister, Lee was also stolen. Singapore is an advanced country that uses state-of-the-art technology for their healthcare and security but even they were attached which means there is always a risk of attack in this sector.

With the implementation of blockchain technology, we can make the data secure and this is one of the most important features that will help the industry.

Now healthcare industry keeps data like- patient information, treatment, prescription, historical information, and research data, etc in the system and they follow a mechanism that only authorized persons can have access to it. Getting this information in the wrong hands is risky and this is very sensitive information so it must be handled with a highly secure system and this can be possible only with blockchain.

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Currently, covid vaccination is going on with almost every country and blockchain is the best technology to manage the data with ease. Some states in India have already adopted blockchain to maintain their vaccination drive. Blockchain is a revolution for the healthcare sector which can transform the industry and it will bring more data innovation and easy accessibility in this segment.

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Potential Applications of Blockchain Technology

Blockchain technology is capable to transform healthcare and make it more patient-centric.
It can digitize the whole patient lifecycle by building immutable records across systems and only the authorized stakeholder will be able to those records in digital form. With this transformation, this technology has the potential to automate healthcare and enhance the trust in healthcare for patients.

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Electronic Medical Record (EMR)- Currently in India majority of more than 75% of patients carry the paperwork with them. Every time they visit the hospital, they carry their paperwork on basis of this their treatment happens. This is a complete manual and its not an efficient way. Because of this old documentation process, handling requires more manpower and cost involved. This also results in loss of data because the entire process is manual and there are high chances of error and data loss in this method. Access to the information is not easy and doctors have to go there the paper process physically to understand plan the treatment. With the implementation of Blockchain technology, this information will be made available online and become easily accessible for treatment or research purposes. In case of any health issue, patient history can be accessed, and accordingly, treatment can be provided.

Healthcare data Protection- Healthcare institutes and hospitals maintain sensitive data and this cant be shared with any unauthorized person. It can be a history of patients, research, medical equipment information, etc but we have seen so many instances of data security breaches. As per the reported record in the last decade, more than 176 million data hacks happened and this is a huge number. This shows that despite having an advanced system in place, data is not safe. With the implementation of blockchain, this can be controlled and this technology will provide an additional layer of security to the data and this protection is highly important.

Easy access to Patient's Medical Records Everything is moving to online space and cloud storage because its easy to access and we can have access top anytime and anywhere. Once we get enough security then the entire patient's data can be stored online and easily accessible too. With this, it will be easy to prescribe the best treatment based on history. For example, if a person travels different location there he faces some health issues. He can visit any nearby healthcare center and show his medical history and even hospitals would have the access to information. In both cases, the doctor would be able to see if there is any chronic disease to the person and require some different treatment. This is possible with this easy accessibility and it will also get us rid of paper documentation.

Billing system- As of now, there are no standard charges for any disease that means every medical center will charge differently and there are no mechanisms to track. Even if govt try to control over billing then also these institutional will find the way but once things are decentralized and this information is available across the healthcare institutions and govt then it can be controlled and this will lead towards fair billing for the treatment.

Health insurance claims- With the implementation of blockchain, the claims process can be automated ad there will be no score to change the data later. This will result in control for fraud activities and insurance companies will get the accurate charges to settle. As of now due to the lack of system hospitals and even patients try to abuse the insurance claim system and this is something that puts more burden on the insurance company but blockchain can make it automated, transparent, and fair.

Tracking medical supply-
Its very important to track medical supply. I mean to say that the entire information for any medicine's manufacturing and its supply must be tracked. With this tracking, we would be able to see the available investor and this will help to get the medicines well on time. This will also ensure the timely delivery to medical centers that are running out of stock and even in this situation, they would be able to check the nearest available stock to provide timely treatment. With the blockchain, implementation ensure the process will be transparent and will help the companies to determine their production planning and better control on cost.

Mobile apps and remote monitoring- These days we use mobile apps for many things and now an app for health would be a great idea. With a secure blockchain network its possible to keep information secure in a blockchain network. This way self-monitoring will be easy and sharing the information can be rapid. Because this will be made available on the blockchain so no one would can access the data unless a private key is provided and this way patient can keep their information handy and safe too.

Companies using Blockchain in Healthcare

Below are some of the companies who are blockchain technology in healthcare and its expected that by the tear 2025 a major chunk of healthcare will get onboarded to

• BurstIQ:- This is a network that is focused on health and brings blockchain to connect business and people. This works to provide security and manage large amounts of data with the compliance of HIPAA rules. BurstIQ works on many things including ale, share, safekeeping, or license of data with script compliance.

• Factom:- Factom helps to store records in digital form so that this information can be accessed by healthcare administrators and hospitals. They secure physical papers with highly secure chips and manage the data at an affordable cost.

• Guardtime:- Guardtime works to help governments and healthcare institutions implement blockchain technology in their health care network. It tries to fill the gap between multiple owners including patients, pharma companies, and providers.

• Medicalchain:- Medicalchain is a company that is using blockchain for secure storage of health records by ensuring the integrity of records. This is UK based company and they had announced a telemedicine platform known as ‘MyClinic.com in May 2018. On this platform, patients can do video consultations and pay the charges using MED Tokens.

• Coral Health:- Coral Health is a Canadian company and it works to leverage the power of blockchain technology to enhance the personalized medicine models. This platform provides the option to patients that they can share their health data with desired doctors. Users can add their data and this offers personalization with a health record.

Challenges with Blockchain in the Health care industry

While Blockchain technology brings a bunch of good things that can revolutionize the healthcare industry but at the same time, there are some challenges as well at we need to go through. Nothing is perfect in this world however if anything offers more positive things than negative then need to adopt some precautions so let's try to see the cons of blockchain technology in healthcare.

• One of the biggest possible challenges is the higher use of computation power. Not every healthcare institute is capable to afford the expense of blockchain technology implementation. Its not a people for big healthcare but still many of them find it expensive and its maintenance will also cost a higher amount.
• In some of the countries it can lead to some regulatory challenges as the government has not yet cleared its stand about blockchain and crypto.

Conclusion

In the last few years, Blockchain technology has got more attention and many industries like banking, hospitality, etc and now healthcare is the next which will adopt the technology to bring better health care services to people. We expect that all healthcare services should be available online and we can be available 24x7 with some taps on the phone. We even like to have access to medical information. During my research, I found that this is one of the challenges to healthcare as they have experienced a huge amount of cyber attacks on their data and it has cost them a lot.

The Healthcare industry wants to provide the next level of healthcare service but their security infrastructure is not hack-proof and because if this security is lack they are not. able to use their services at its best and backed by technology. With the implementation of blockchain technology, this issue should be resolved but it might take few years to happen.

Overall it is a great lesson and I could learn a lot about this technology. Healthcare is one of the segments that are part of everyone's life so having better service backed by technology will help.

It was such a great experience to learn about the use of blockchain technology in healthcare thanks to the amazing professor @yohan2on for giving us this opportunity and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Thank you so much

Thanks again to professor @yohan2on for this great lesson.