Blockchain has the potential to increase the efficiency of the healthcare system and make it patient-centric. Lack of interoperability, fragmented communication, and poor incident reporting, are the main reasons for medical errors. Besides being a viable solution for minimizing medical errors, Blockchain can also restructure the healthcare ecosystem. Interoperability can enable data-driven healthcare models and public health policy, while transparency and security can make healthcare patient-centric. These services are provided by the best healthcare app development company in ensuring security of data across healthcare portals.

Why is Blockchain adoption in healthcare important?

Blockchain can solve many critical problems pertaining to health data. By enabling efficient data sharing across stakeholders, improving data security, and ensuring patient data privacy, it can bring digital transformation in healthcare. Many players in this domain provide future-ready blockchain app development services to elevate security and improve experience.

Here are the reasons blockchain adoption in healthcare is important. 

• Communication 

Fragmented communication between healthcare systems and between healthcare providers and patients leaves critical medical questions unaddressed. Lack of communication hinders effective use of health data, leading to unsatisfactory outcomes. By facilitating decentralized storage and access to data, Blockchain removes communication gaps. With the increasing adoption of loT medical devices, it can ensure real-time, secure, and faster data transfer, leading to improved preventive healthcare. 

• Interoperability

Geographical and technological differences lead to the scattering of patient data across Electronic Health Records (EHRs). It prevents efficient use of the patient's medical history in treatment and stretches the diagnosis and treatment time. Decentralized Ledger Technology (DLT) removes geographical barriers while securing access to patient data across the network. It can also automate the distribution of data and enable real-time data sharing. 

• Data Consistency

Inconsistent patient health data contributes to medical errors. With the current multi- channel EHR systems, discrepancies in naming, structure, format, etc., slow down the healthcare provider's work. Rule-based Smart Contracts ensure consistency in patient data access and streamline analysis for faster treatment. 

• Data Security 

Centralized networks are prone to data leaks and are susceptible to attacks. Blockchain not only decentralizes the network removing the possibility of attacks, but it also digitizes the identities for securing patient data. 

• Cost-effectiveness 

The centralized storage and management of data require additional expenses such as third-party fees. Healthcare providers and patients bear this cost. Blockchains remove the need for third-party data management. They allow the network participants to verify the transactions, which reduces significant costs while speeding up data access. 

How are Blockchain applications transforming healthcare? 

Blockchain applications are improving patient safety in many ways. 

• Electronic Health Records (EHR)

EHRs contain sensitive patient data that is exchanged between doctors, pharmacists, and hospitals. This data is prone to loss, modification, malware attacks, and tampering. 

Blockchain-enabled systems can store, manage, share, and transmit data more efficiently. They improve data security by placing data-access control in the hands of the patients. Patients can grant access to this data depending upon requirements in real time. 

The greater interoperability of data in the blockchain system also allows for better aggregation, transmission, and analysis. It removes communication and information gaps while ensuring data consistency. The same data is usable by various stakeholders for diagnosis, research, processing insurance claims, or identifying problems in past diagnoses. 

Most healthcare app development companies provide an extensive guide to blockchain app development before commencing the project. It is advisable to read the guide thoroughly and have a clarification on the partnership before moving ahead with the project.

• Preventing Counterfeit Drug use

Centralized databases are incapable of offering large-scale interoperability. They also leave the supply chain open to malpractices such as tampering with drug information and the introduction of counterfeit drugs. Besides, they are susceptible to attacks, trust breaches, and errors. 

Blockchain-enabled pharmaceutical solutions can enable efficient tracking of drugs in the supply chain. They can also reduce the logistical role of wholesalers and bring down costs. Pharmaceutical supply chain participants can use Blockchain transactions to verify drug information, track orders, and update records. 

• Smart Healthcare

Blockchain-based applications can ensure the security and privacy of patient data from loT medical devices. Data from smart health devices such as watches, health bands, glucose meters, etc., is transferable directly to the patient's EHR. This can improve preventive healthcare by saving costs and providing extra time for doctors to handle emergency cases. 

• Medical Device Supply chain

Blockchain-based solutions can solve the problem of transparency, traceability, and verifiability in the supply chain of medical devices. Improved data integrity will reduce the instances of device counterfeiting. 

Challenges to Blockchain adoption in healthcare

There is no doubt about Blockchain's transformative capacity for healthcare. However, despite the promise, industry excitement, and soaring investments, the road ahead is not smooth. 

The challenges to Blockchain's healthcare future appear in cases of its large-scale adoption and implementation. 

In regions like Europe, where data protection laws are very strong, Blockchain adoption is tricky. Integration of Blockchain-enabled solutions to existing healthcare systems requires expertise that is not available across the globe. 

There are issues related to the processing speed and scalability of blockchains which are hindering their widespread adoption.

Nationwide adoption of Blockchain in healthcare has the potential of restructuring the entire public health system. However, before such a large-scale revamping of public healthcare, significant technological, organizational, and behavioral changes will be necessary. 

Adopting Blockchain for healthcare on a nationwide scale will require advanced network security infrastructure and citizen consensus for EHR access. Clearer regulations and favorable laws accommodating Blockchain will be helpful in Blockchain-based revolutionary transformation of healthcare.