Blockchain Technology in Healthcare

The healthcare industry as a wholeis constantly evolving. Many issues surrounding the industry have caught theattention of physicians, pharmaceutical companies, commercial-payers,government agencies, technology-developers, and even the patients themselves. Whilea significant amount of progress has been made in regards to the system’sefficiencies (or lack-thereof), continuous innovations are being explored toimprove the delivery of care, and the corresponding business models behind it.

Blockchain technology allows fordata to be securely collected, stored, transferred, and analyzed in adecentralized and distributed manner. Not to be confused with Bitcoin or othercryptocurrencies, blockchain technology serves a much broader framework thanjust the exchange of money. While these cryptocurrencies all utilize blockchaintechnologies to function, the underlying platform has much broadercapabilities. In the world of healthcare, the general adoption of blockchain technologycould improve care for the general patient population, while simultaneouslysaving costs across the industry through improved data-utilization.

Many organizations operating in thebusiness of healthcare share similar issues that are constantly beingrevisited. Several problems exist relating to EMR systems, which areessentially systems used by providers to collect and store patient data.Inefficiencies relating to transparency and collaboration are monumental, andwhen combined with misaligned incentives, leads to decreased effectiveness ofcare. In this article, we are going to explore some of the common issues withinhealthcare, and discuss a few ways that blockchain technology can play acrucial role in problem-solving.