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Top applications of blockchain technology in healthcare

BY READERS DIGEST

23rd Jun 2021 Technology

Top applications of blockchain technology in healthcare

Technology is developing rapidly as there is numerous modern technology that has started gaining control over the world and one of them is the blockchain technology.

It has a great scope for the future and can help healthcare in making numerous improvements. You can click on Bitcoin Billionaire, if you want to get rich with bitcoin trading. Few of the best applications of blockchain technology that can bring some revolutionary changes in healthcare as listed below.

Smart contracts

Blockchain protects the medical records of patients and allows health professional to make digital agreements using the smart contracts enabled by the technology. Smart contracts are one of the most incredible applications of blockchain technology in healthcare. It allows eliminating all the intermediaries involved in the process of making a payment and helps to cut down the costs to a great extent. A smart contract is a code that is added to the blockchain with certain conditions and requirements. When all the mentioned conditions are met, the smart contract gets triggered, and the transactions get processed. It removes the need to involve any financial intermediary to complete a transaction.

How will smart contracts help in healthcare?

The first and most fantastic benefit offered by smart contracts is that they will help to improve the traditional insurance system. Currently, if we talk about health insurance, there are several third parties involved in it, but smart contracts will remove all of them. If patients will start buying health insurance through smart contracts, it will store all the patient's details on blockchain and will ensure that all the data is safe from all kinds of risks such as hacking. Most importantly, it will make it a lot easier to get health insurance claims. With a traditional insurance system, it takes a lot of time and effort to file an insurance claim, but with smart contracts, it will be simple. Whenever an assured patient gets any treatment at the hospital, the smart contract will get triggered, and the required amount of money will be transferred directly to the account of the hospital.

Excellent drug traceability

One of the biggest issues in the healthcare industry is fake and duplicate drugs. Drug counterfeiting makes the drug manufacturing companies face massive losses and puts the lives of patients at risk. Fake and duplicate drugs are an alarming issue that has led to several deaths and serious health complications. If we believe some reports, over 30% of total drugs in the market are duplicates. The Healthcare industry has been trying to find a solution for the problem of drug counterfeiting but has failed to do it. But now the blockchain technology has provided them with a perfect solution to eliminate the hassle of fake and duplicate drugs.

Blockchain technology helped in ensuring the authenticity of drugs as it allows to easily trace each and every drug and check its sources. Each drug has a lifecycle that starts from its production and ends at the consumer. The only way to check the authenticity of a drug is by knowing its origin, and blockchain allows you to do that. It makes drugs highly traceable as you can get all the information about all the stages of their lifecycle; production, distribution, etc. With such a system implemented in healthcare, it will become almost impossible to counterfeit any drug. Moreover, when a supplier registers a product on the blockchain, it will be verified at every stage, which will add an additional layer of security.

Data sharing and management

Privacy is important for everyone, and when it comes to the data of patients, it becomes more crucial. Healthcare records and data have suffered a lot of breaches in the past few years. If the healthcare industry adopts blockchain technology, it will be able to store and manage the data of patients better and eliminate the possibilities of data breach or theft. Blockchain stored the patient data in blocks, and each one of them can only be accessed by the patients using their unique ID. It will ensure that no one would be able to access the records and data of patients without their permission. Moreover, it will also allow the patients to share their medical records and data for research purposes without revealing their real identities.

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