Blockchain Technology In Healthcare Industry | Steemit Crypto Academy | S4W3 | My Homework for professor @ yohan2on

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The health care industry is one of the most crucial industries in the whole world. It has a very significant role in human development. As we usually say health is wealth means having good health is better than having wealth with poor health.

Now with the advancement of science, the health sector is also going through vast changes. New technologies are being introduced with the application of science which helps in curing the disease which was incurable during the earlier day such as cancer or new methods of cures are being introduced to minimize the risk and increasing the efficiency or success rate.

Apart from this, many new technologies are also being introduced to improve efficiency and increasing the range of medical facilities in remote areas. For example using remote surgery in which by using high-speed internet and various robotic machines, now doctors can perform surgery from miles away. And even if you are living in a country where that surgery is not possible, by using this doctors can perform surgery and can cure you.

There are many startups in the world that are working towards implanting electric chips into the human brain to increase human brain efficiency or to implanting a device that can control other devices. Neuralink is one of these startups led by Elon Musk which is working in this field.

Now all these areas and research done in these areas generates a huge amount of information and data which are required to store. This data is usually centralized in nature and thus it possesses all the weaknesses that a centralized server can have. This data is more prone to get hacked and also this is unorganized data.

Thus by implementing blockchain technology, the sector can be greatly impacted. Data can be made immutable and more secure.

Another challenge with our current health care system is not having any system or not having an efficient system to collect and record patients data.

As of now in India, most of the population is suffering from chronic diseases. And the cure of these people is done on the basis of these chronic diseases.

Now let's assume I am having diabetes and I met with an accident and I was alone. People from nearby rushed me to the hospital and I was nearly unconscious and was in pain.

Now in this condition how doctors would come to know about this. Even if I am asked, I probably would give the wrong answer unconsciously, and then prescribed medication can make me suffer more.

In many countries like India there is no data available of any patient but in many countries data of patients are stored on a server from where it can be used by any medical institution to cure patients. It's called human information exchange or better abbreviated as HEI. this HEI contains information about previous surgeries, if there were, previous prescription and chronic diseases such as diabetes are mentioned. But as data is stored by a central authority, it is usually unorganized and data integrity is usually poor.

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But at the same time, there are many other problems associated with HEI. Let's take a look at these problems:-

1. Trust-Based Network:- HEI is usually a trust Based Network where all health institutions came together and share information about patients. And when information is extracted from HEI, it is trusted that other institutions had entered the correct information. Now what is because of human error anything is mistakenly erased or entered, and then other institutions use that information for the cure.

2. Problem with keeping the patient's record:- One of the biggest problems with HEI is while keeping the record of patients across the country. And as this whole data is recorded by a central authority, it becomes harder to manage all data.

3. Privacy: Another main problem associated with HEI is privacy. There are many patients who want to keep their disease private to themselves. This is everyone's right and it should be respected. Then it is another big challenge to keep this big amount of data with privacy. As only a central authority manages this data, it is more prone to get hacked.

4. Required permission:- As all the data is managed by a central authority, all institutions are required to ask for permission to access that data because of the privacy of patients. Now, what if doctors need immediate permission to patient's data and central authority fails to do so. It might become a deadly mistake to that patient.

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How can we make this efficient with the integration of blockchain technology:-

1. Privacy:- With the integration of blockchain technology with HEI we can increase privacy in the field by using keys Cryptography where any patient can give permission to only specific doctors or institutions to see all the information recorded. And Patients can also limit access by changing its key. Thus integration of blockchain technology will increase privacy.

2. With the integration of blockchain technology in the health sector we can use smart contracts which will help regulate the appointments, and also patients can give access to any institution or doctor to its data for a very specific time. And also by using smart contract payment between institution and patient can also be increased.

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1. With this we can increase harmony between many research institutions researching. Institutions can share information on blockchain and protect that data using Cryptography.

2. Cross-chain interaction of data from one healthcare company to the other will make it more efficient and scalable and will ease the job for both the patient and the doctor.

3. Pharma companies can seamlessly integrate with the patient record as well as the hospital and the intermediary can be eliminated which could result in saving of cost. But the takeaway and the most important thing is that healthcare can mitigate the risk of counterfeit drugs.

4. The global supply chain in the healthcare system can be more transparent and more liquid when the underlying infrastructure to connect with another will be Blockchain because blockchain will ensure 100% up-time and more transparency. It will also make inventory management more effective. In a time like COVID-19, when many under-developed countries suffered badly, because of poor supply chain management of the vaccines, the use of Blockchain seems paramount.

5. Both medicine and medical appliances will find their use & availability a lot easier with Blockchain. Particularly who needs it and where is he/she located and how traceable the route is. Blockchain will make all these three synchronous, saves time, saves lives.

6. Together with IoT devices, Blockchain will make clinical research properly integrated with drug development.

7. The real-time access of data, diagnosis, appropriate treatment, availability of a particular drug will make the healthcare system more operation and apt to the requirement on a case-to-case basis. That can be possible with Blockchain as the underlying infrastructure.

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Possible challenges

1. Regulatory issues together with different guidelines and medical compliances specific to the region could be a hurdle for the developers to sync with various networks.

2. A connected global network and a medical record of several billion people could be a challenge to the size of the data or block size limitation.

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Conclusion

Blockchain is poised to make significant reform in the Healthcare industry and that will definitely transform the whole world and the entire world will be better prepared to combat any emergency situations like COVID-19 and can save a lot of precious lives. It's time to go beyond crypto to make use of Blockchain in the Healthcare industry.