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***Hello everybody!***
This week's lesson about **Applications of Blockchain in the Health Care Industry** was really interesting for me. Being a pharmacist I am also a part of the healthcare industry and excited to know about various blockchain applications that can be integrated into the industry for better patient care.
Here I am submitting my assignment
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#### Research and Discuss the potential applications of Blockchain in the Health care industry
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### Introduction
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Blockchain technology is now ready to take place in various industries due to its unique features like immutability, trustlessness, privacy and security. The Healthcare industry is also one of them where blockchain technology can benefit the industry in many ways and make the industries' proceeding far easier, economical, transparent and secure.
### Major issues of the healthcare industry to be address
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In today's era where various technologies are at their best and improving continuously, still, the healthcare industry facing many issues which are needed to be addressed for quality and a hassle-free healthcare system. The emerging blockchain technology can be the right answer to the problems of the industry.
#### Costly healthcare system
There are various reasons that make the system unaffordable to patients. The present healthcare system uses the centralized system for patient's record-keeping, management of hospitals and pharmacies. The centralized system is costly as it required a huge team to manage everything.
#### Privacy issue of the patients
Patients important records are kept under the control of hospital management which is centralized in nature. Records are always venerable to leak as anybody in the hospital management can have access to the record room. there are also chances that the record can be destroyed due to any unfortunate incidents.
#### Patients' record management
Patient records are not kept in an organized way in most of the hospitals. For chronic and complex health problems, a long history of records is essential for the treatment. In case of changing the hospital, it is difficult to link the new hospital to the previous one and to avoid such circumstances patients need to keep all the records in an organized way which is always again at risk to lost/destroyed and not possible for all the patient to keep the record in an organized and at a safe place.
#### Supply of counterfeit medicines
It is a major problem in the health care sector particularly in the third world and poor countries. Due to not having and any solid system to prevent the supply of counterfeit medicines thousands of patients are forced to be administered such medicines and their lives are at risk.
### Major applications of blockchain technology that can help to improve the present healthcare system
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<sub>[Source](https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/blockchain-healthcare-technology-concept-gm1176692957-328180364)</sub>
Blockchain is a digital distributed ledger. To manage the transactions and data in an organized, immutable and secure way, different types of blockchains like Public Blockchain, Private Blockchain, Permissioned Blockchain etc. can be used alone or in combination to resolve the major issues of the current healthcare system.
#### Blockchain and cost-effectiveness of the healthcare services
Unlike in the traditional system of record-keeping system, a single system can be created for every patient. This record can be shared in real-time without making a copy of it. Records can be updated constantly. It can save a lot of time and resources required to maintain the records. This electronic record on a blockchain is not only cost-effective but also secure and can be accessed from anywhere.
#### Data management and sharing in medical research
Clinical and other medical researchers create a ton of data every year. Keeping all the records systematically in order, immutable and secure is a big challenge for the industry. The data is so important that on the basis of these data new medicines and healthcare procedures develops for complex health problems. To keep these data and sharing among scientists could be easy in a secure manner by adopting blockchain technology.
#### Patient record management
It is a very common practice among patients particularly in patients with chronic and complex diseases to change the hospital and medical practitioners frequently if they are not satisfied with the treatment. In such conditions keeping all records in order is a big challenge for the healthcare system and as the system is centralised so one hospital can deny sharing data with another hospital.
Creating all the records of patients on the blockchain can make it very easy, hassle-free and secure. Data can be created in real-time and can be protected with encryption so only authorised persons can access it any time from anywhere. It prevents miscommunication between two healthcare professionals who are treating a common patient. This can facilitate faster and effective diagnosis and treatment for patients.
#### Croudfunding with cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency is one of the features of blockchain technology. Most of the time the medical treatment is not affordable to poor and underprivileged patients. In such conditions fundraising for the patients is also trending nowadays. Crowdfunding can be easy and transparent using blockchain technology. Funds can be raised in cryptocurrency and while raising the funds patient history can be shared with donors to make them assure that their donation is not going into the wrong hands.
#### Colobration among different organizations
Using blockchain technology, various healthcare organizations all over the world can collaborate to reduce healthcare inequality to combat the disease. A better healthcare facility with the latest development in the industry can be accessible to all the professionals who are taking care of their patients. Even if the sharing of the latest information is chargeable, cryptocurrency could be very useful to send and receive money instantly without involving any third party banking system.
#### Prevention of counterfeit medicines
Integrating blockchain technology in the drug manufacturing process can solve the problem of fake/counterfeit medicines. From the origin of the ingredients of the medicines, immutable records can be created. This record once entered into the blockchain not only can help to prevent fake drugs but also reduce error in manufacturing and can help at the time of recall of any particular batch.
#### Tracking of drugs and inventory control
Supply chain management already has started to adopt blockchain technology and this could be very beneficial for the pharma industry for the timely distribution of medicines. Various medicines and vaccines need to maintain the cold chain at a particular temperature. Data of the temperature during transportation can be entered on blockchain in real-time and in the case of a break of the cold chain, it can be identified in a trustless manner.
#### Use in healthcare insurance
Delay in the insurance claim, fraud claim, high insurance premium are some of the key problems in any insurance product including healthcare insurance. Blockchain technology has the potential to solve these issues. By deploying a smart contract delay fraud claims can be prevented and claims can be automated. It also eliminates the involvement of any centralised authority and saves huge administrative costs. Thus insurance premiums can fall sizably.
### Leading blockchain projects in the healthcare industry
#### Patientory
A startup company based in USA provide end to end encryption of medical data to doctors, patient and other users to facilitate medical information in a highly secure manner. A patient can create his profile to track and monitor his entire medical history including medical reports, doctor's prescription, pharmacy bills, medical insurance and claims etc.
There is a feature of community also where a user can interact with other user to share and discuss about various issues related to healthcare.
#### FarmaTrust
Its main focus is on improving drug supply chain. Using this digital supply chain application activities of pharma companies can be monitored and traked. It helps to prevent supply of counterfit drugs in the market.
It works by connecting all the key elements of supply chain like sourcing of raw material, manufacturing and transportation to distributor and then patients.
It not only reduce the supply chain cost but improve the trust on the industry. They are also developing advance algorithms that could automatically detect the fake drugs.
#### Doc.AI
This startup founded in 2016, work in the data security and analysis field, Secure the medical data and fetches the important information out of that. Tons of data stored in their system and data scientist analyze that data. The important information fetched from the data can be shared with medical practionars to improve patient care and entire healthcare system.
#### Innovative application of Blockchain in Healthcare
DApps like BitMed introduced by Most Crypto Health solutions offer crypto tokens to encourage people to engage in a healthy schedule. The aim of the company is that by following a healthy schedule patients' risk of obesity, diabetes, hypertension etc will be reduced and they will earn some rewards in the crypto.
### Major challenges in adopting blockchain technology.
Blockchain technology still is in a very early stage and need various developments and improvements to integrate it with any industry including the healthcare sector. There are some key issues that must be addressed by the blockchain industry
- Scalability issue of the blockchain technology.
It is a major issue in blockchain technology but the problem is getting solved with time in new blockchains.
- Interoperability between blockchains
Without interoperability, it is very difficult to adopt the blockchain on a mass level. Using a single blockchain for the healthcare industry could be a solution but still, interoperability can make the blockchain application much convenient.
- Availability of Internet
Despite the internet revolution still, a big number of the population is deprived of internet connectivity. Without affordable and fast internet it is not possible for all to take advantage of this technology.
### Concluion
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The Healthcare care industry is not only one of the largest industries but also the most important to humanity. A lot of development has happened in the industry to combat chronic and rare diseases but still, a lot more improvements are to be done to make the services affordable, effective and approachable to every human being on the planet.
Despite of having challenges today in adopting blockchain technology, it has tremendous potential to offer long term benefits. The integration of Blockchain technology into the healthcare industry could be a revolutionary step to take the services to the next level.
Thank you prof @yohan2on for this informative and interesting lecture.
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