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Hi guys, <br>
I am delighted to be here as well. I want to specially welcome you all to the week 3 of the academy. To day I will be attempting the assignment given by the professor @yohan2on. Let's get started.
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Research and Discuss the potential applications of Blockchain in the Health care industry
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One of the emerging technology that captures the attention of almost every aspect of life including researches and industry is the block chain technology. This blockchain technology came in the year 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto was working on the invention of Bitcoin. Many definition has been given concerning the term blockchian and the most important and key points that should always be in the definitions are the fact that the system is decentralized, distributed and immutable ledger and it can be use to securely store data in different computers in a network known as the peer-to-peer and does not involve any third party.
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Before we completely dive into the topic of discussion I will want to deviate a bit to enlighten us a few things we need to know about the block chain. Block chain is currently categorise into four (4) different types namely public, private, consortium and hybrid block chain. The public block chain as the name implies it provide full decentralization that implies anyone can have access to it. Private blockchain are meant for particular set of groups so if you are not part of it you can't have access. In the case of consortium blockchain, you have to be given permission to have access to it. The last but not the list is the hybrid blockchain which is a combination of both the private and public blockchain.
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<b>Blockchain Use Cases in Healthcare</b><br>
Here in this section we will be covering the following:-
- Use of Smart Contracts
- Improving Medical Research
- Electronic Medical record
- Remote Patient Monitoring
- Pharmaccutical Supply Chain
- Health Issurance Claims
- Contributions classify by use case
- Challenges of Blockchain in the health sector.
- Conclusion
**Use of Smart Contracts**
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Once the healthcare sector adopts the blockchain technology, then the use of smart contract is inevitable. We know that smart contract is is a set of program that has been design to work based on certain instructions. Once smart contract is used in the healthcare sector, many things will be done automatically because the system will be able to dictate a certain sickness and then make possible prescriptions.
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**Improving Medical Research**
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In the case of improving medical research, the blockchain if adopted will go a long way in helping medical practitioners to search and then store what ever information on the blockchain so that others who will come after will work more and then improve on the research as well. Now since it is a blockchain technology many persons can actually be carrying out research on the same data source.
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**Electronic Medical record**
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[Source](https://images.app.goo.gl/BhGpeEvKBuQAx3er7)
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Medical records is one of the most important part of the health care sector. When ever you visit any hospital, for the doctor to properly ascertain what drugs to prescribe to you after examining your health he or she will love to know your past medical record. So for healthcare sector to be improved completely records has to be stored using the blockchain since we said it is immutable. To properly explain this term Electronic Medical Record (EMRs) lets consider another term that most people normal use to interchange them which is called the Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Now briefly let me differentiate them. The EMRs focuses on the medical and treatment history of the patient which is always in the patients clinical office, whereas the EHRs is responsible for the complete health issues of the patient which goes beyond the data in the clinic and goes all round for information about the patient.
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The inclusion of the Electronic Medical record in the health sector will enable patients all over the world met as many professionals who can handle their case without any form of stress since their record can be accessed by the medical practitioners.
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**Remote Patient Monitoring**
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[Source](https://images.app.goo.gl/fpwUUSW5g73MzWzVA)
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The blockchain will enable the remote monitoring of patients so that their health will always be on a check. Now mobile devices can be use to monitor patient and also collect the records of patient. It is the duty of the blockchain technology to store, share and retrieve the remotely stored data of the patient when ever it is needed. Now when talking about monitoring patients, there is this connection between IoT and the blockchain technology. IoT is majorly used in the e-health sector where mobile devices which has been program do wonders of keeping and dictating any form of fault in human. On this note we can say that the combination of the blockchain and the IoT can be used to access and also retrieve data stored in the e-health.
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**Pharmaccutical Supply Chain**
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This is another use case of blockchain. We all know that most of the Pharmaccutical industries today produce fake drugs which may lead to killing or deformation of as many who take the medicine. This case has been solved using the blockchain technology as it helps to identify fake drugs. Before now, it is not always very easy to identify fake drugs but since the blockchain technology came on board the problem had been completely been resolved.
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**Health Issurance Claims**
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Blockchain immutability is one of the areas where the health insurance claims have or will benefit greatly. Recall that immutability means that data stored are means that the data can not be altered or erased easily on the blockchain. Let's take for instance the MIStore which happens to be a medical system which is blockchain based in nature, this system provides medical insurance industries with immutable medical insurance data at any point in time. This means that the record that is always presented is accurate as it is not usually tempered with by any individual.
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**Contributions classify by use case**
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Here I will be presenting this data in a tabular format. This is for your information and clarification.
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| Use casee | Framwork | Data storage | Contribution | Year |
|-----|------|-----|----|---|
| Electronic Medical record | Proprietary | off-chain | Blockchain EMR management system | 2018 |
| Remote Patient Monitoring | Ethereum | Hybrid |Blockchain smart contract perform real data analysis | 2018 |
| Pharmaccutical Supply Chain | Hyperledger Fabric | on-chain | Design a secure and immutable and traceable pharma supply chain | 2019 |
| Health Issurance Claims | Ethereum | on-chain | proposed a blockchain based insurance storage system | 2018 |
**Challenges of Blockchain in the health sector.**
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Despite the benefits of the blockchain to the health sector as we have mention few above, there are also certain challenges of the blockchain in the health sector among which is the issue of semantic interoperability, this means that there are missing standard which are suppose to be used when ever we are to develop a health care application. Another major issue is the issue of scalability most especially in the record of medical data. We all know that the health records are very voluminous and some times of stored on-chain can lead to performance degradation. Another challenge is that of hackers, as smart contracts can be hacked there by the immutablilty of the blockchain and self code execution can become a serious issue. Another challenge that the healthcare tends to have is the challenge of financial impendiments. We know that a lot of people in our community today are very poor hence it becomes more difficult for them to pay their hospital bill and the blockchain will require resource to run on. These singular act has lead to many patient losing their lives and most of our medical practitioner tends to go on industrial actions due to lack of payment of money by the government.
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# <center>Conclusion</center>
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Due to the exponential growth in technology, eventually every sector of the human life is gradually adopting the blockchain technology. The health sector is not left out as this has help in making the medical sector more reliable and more lives are been saved exponentially. Though we have made mention of some challenges that the blockchain technology is having in the health sector like the scalability, security, interoperability etc., this challenges are been address in other to win the confidence of the users of the blockchain in the medical sector.
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