Blockchain for Electronic Health Records: The Possible Use Cases

“Blockchain has the potential to revolutionize EHR interoperability and the exchange of healthcare big data” - Healthcare IT Analytics

The Blockchain technology is creating a hype around a gamut of industries and is being on speculations taking its capabilities in the healthcare sector.

Its functions of decentralized transaction validation, data provenance, data sharing and data integration are a good fit for the needs of health information exchange and clinical trials. [1].

After investigating the current workflow of Blockchain in EHR, here we distill down its inherent benefits in Electronic Health Records:

• Data Security: Blockchain is equipped with the latest cryptographic features that safeguard patient sensitive information and all medical data. It helps in checking the data authenticity with the help of a digital signature and provides full protection to data.
• Cost Savings: This ledger technology eliminates third-parties and banks by enabling peer-to-peer transactions which aid in lowering the transactional cost at a greater extent.
• Increase in Patient Satisfaction: A blockchain platform coordinates patient records, a history of procedures, and insurance claims to reduce redundancies and prevent losses. This helps healthcare providers to access medical history and insurance information and make quick decisions. This also helps in improving the patient experience as well as the healthcare business model.
• Accessing Distributed Data: Distributed ledger technology stores all the data in the nodes of a blockchain platform which allows hospitals, insurance companies, and patients to access the medical records from a single point which is secured enough and has full control that who should and shouldn’t see the patient’s data.
• Healthcare Data Management: As aforementioned, if all the data has to be stored on a single point with open access will certainly add to woes and a severe threat to confidentiality. In such cases, permission blockchains such as Hyperledger Fabric or Corda set rules for giving permissions to companies to access the data.
• Immutability: Data stored in the blockchain cannot be altered by anyone. Not even the admin, owner or third party.

Besides all these, this distributed ledger technology ensures it provides Real-time EHR updates, seamless interoperability and secured sharing of EHR while ensuring data integrity and protection of patient privacy.

Related : Blockchain in Healthare

Thrilled to know what experts think about how this revolutionizing technology and its impact on the healthcare industry? Join the #Techtalk on “Blockchain and EHR” at 39th GITEX Technology Week to get deep insights.

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