Healthcare industry uses digital methods for maintaining electronic health records.
From the patients personal information to diagnostic reports, and doctors prescriptions, healthcare organizations, currently use the centralized database for saving data.
IBMs Institute for Business Value Blockchain interviewed 200 healthcare executives and found 16% of them are willing to deploy a commercial blockchain solution.
Though healthcare centers are adopting digital technologies, the patients medical records are currently stored in the centralized servers. It creates the attack surface for hackers. Accentures survey claims one in five employees working in the healthcare is willing to sell the sensitive medical data to the unauthorized parties.
Recently, Grindr dating app has disclosed users HIV status, sexuality, GPS position, and other personal details to third-parties. Sharing protected health information of patients without their consent can make them feel traumatized. Once the medical data of an individual is generated, data enrichment is done to make the data secure.
Data stored on blockchain is like your cryptocurrency such as bitcoin saved in the crypto wallet. Though the users wallet can be identified with a public key, only a secret private key can help anyone read or understand the stored data. Any healthcare service provider would require patient consent or authorization to access PHI. If a patient denies sharing the medical data, no healthcare provider could get access to the records stored on the blockchain.
Add further information related to the timestamp, demographics, involved stakeholders, and eventually sign and provision the data to be stored on the blockchain.
The completion of the above steps adds value to the data to be stored on the blockchain.
We shall now discuss how health records can be stored on the blockchain. Even more on https://www.leewayhertz.com/healthcare-blockchain-how-medical-records-secured-blockchain/, Transactions are completed and identified uniquely: Transactions containing patients health records are saved on the blockchain with their unique IDs and patients public key. If a healthcare provider wants to access a patients public non-identifiable data, the transaction ID is matched, and the information is displayed.
Smart contracts ensure the enforcement of the business rules, compliance requirement, and the users will before the data is shared or retrieved.
Stakeholders involved in the patients treatment can consume the stored data with the patients consent.
Smart contracts will ensure a transparent, conflict-free exchange of the information. In case, the user denies to exchange the information; no one could access the patients health records.
Blockchain healthcare solution could also enable healthcare research companies to use health records for research purposes without affecting the patients privacy. Read further to understand how
Data Mining and AI in Healthcare Blockchain
But the centralized approach for maintaining the data could hinder the patients privacy. Blockchain could be leveraged to bring trust in the clinical trials and medical research process.
As discussed above, the blockchain healthcare platform could use de-identification for hiding the patients identity. So, medical research companies could utilize the non-identifiable records to carry out the research activities.
Heres what benefits could Blockchain bring to the Healthcare Industry
Control over the data:
Anyone willing to access the health records would require the patients public key. Patients could seamlessly control who should access what data.
Since the data is saved in encrypted form, it remains unreadable to the hackers.