Blockchain technology’s inherent disruptive potential is embodied in its ability to serve the needs of many industries.
When blockchain technology was first conceived, it served a very specific usage. Originally, blockchain was merely the supporting framework for Bitcoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Since then, however, blockchain has become significant as a form of technology that has the potential to disrupt the world as we know it today. Currently, institutions all over the world are investigating real-world applications for blockchain technology, including in the healthcare industry.
Modern healthcare
Few, if any, industries are more important than healthcare. In most countries, healthcare represents billions of dollars spent annually, and is responsible for the lives of millions of people.
However, due to the industry’s sensitive nature and importance, every adoption made by the industry has to be meticulously planned, as there is no room for failure.
That being said, there are many aspects of the healthcare industry that require overhaul, but have not yet had the opportunity to have required upgrades made to their infrastructure.
In fact, in the current system, doctors have often complained that a large portion of their job involves data entry, instead of actual medical work.
Health records
To put it lightly, current systems of record keeping in the healthcare industry are long outdated.
Medical institutions have difficulty safely sharing medical records and, as a result, patients are often forced to manually transfer their records or have their records manually requested when seeing other medical practitioners.
This issue is amplified when individuals are in a situation where it is not easy for two separate medical offices to exchange records, or in emergency situations where time and precision are important.
However, upgrading electronic medical records systems is made difficult by the innate sensitivity of the information. The health records of patients are invaluable and private, and without a safe way to store them among other healthcare agencies, the status quo will not be changed.
Blockchain technology in the healthcare industry
The biggest obstacles preventing the healthcare industry from upgrading its current system of record keeping is security, as we’ve outlined above.
That’s where blockchain comes in. Blockchain technology’s very nature makes it an extremely valuable method of storing information, and in the context of the healthcare industry, could help disrupt the current record keeping system.
Blockchain works on a peer-to-peer basis where all entities are treated equal by the network. This provides an incentive for organizations to cooperate, as doing so eliminates redundancy and ensures data integrity within the network.
In this sense, we can think of blockchain as a global database. However, due to its decentralized nature, blockchain is much more secure than other forms of information storage.
Internally, information is added to a blockchain in ‘blocks’ and all new information is verified against pre-existing information in the chain. Since the database is decentralized, unauthorized or malicious access would require somehow targeting every single entity involved in the chain.
Externally, it is very easy to track data throughout blockchain systems, making it easy to manually verify the legitimacy of all data, and the authority of those accessing it.
The future of blockchain in the healthcare industry
Blockchain technology could be the solution that the healthcare industry has spent years waiting for.
The industry is in need of a way to ensure that all information is secure, yet also easy to share with other relevant medical centers and practitioners. Thanks to blockchain, the industry could abandon its outdated system of record keeping in favor of one that takes doctors away from their keyboards and back to patient treatment.
If you’d like to learn more about how blockchain technology could be applied to your industry, feel free to contact eXeBlock Technology Inc. to discuss your needs. Connect with us on social media to stay up-to-date on company news and industry developments: Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Reddit and LinkedIn.
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