Healthcare 4.0

Blockchain as one of the emerging technologies is going to bridge the gap between that has significant consequences in the realisations of Healthcare 4. 0. It is an important distributed ledger architecture, and has been positioned at the frontier to solve the industry’s interoperability and trust challenges.  It is ideally suited to address a number of trust issues, such as patient identification, patient consent, provider side user authentication, medicine research and discovery, reduction of billing fraud and erroneous malpractice claims. In addition to improving patient agency and control over data sharing, this methodology may help to remove one of the biggest barriers to clinical decision making i.e. the inability to rely on the data available at the point of care. 

Therefore, blockchain has the capacity to become the backbone for digital health, incorporating data from patient and providing a robust and comprehensive solutions from which authorised users, such as providers, patients, and policy maker has the access. The combined solutions deliver on Electronic Health Record, digital transformation in healthcare, Access and affordable healthcare for all, Patient Data Leverage, Patient Provider Payment collaboration through smart contracts, Data Security, protects the patient identity, Medical Research and Trails.

The potential of blockchain technology is incredibly exciting and combining it with EHR will ensure we all benefit from a brighter, fairer, healthier future.  

Smart contracts combined with blockchain technology represent the future of healthcare and medicine. They embrace high-level encryption and security that allows users, patients, and doctors to have trust that their information is safe and attack-proof.

Blockchain and smart contracts (i.e., computer code that can be run on blockchain) are increasingly popular for healthcare applications. However, only very few implementations exist because of the complexity of the technologies.

As blockchain technology becomes more mainstream, the benefits of using smart contracts in healthcare are becoming more widely understood. Managing patients’ health information, records, and data have become a large task for many practitioners. This is where the role of smart contracts come into the picture.

Healthcare data is generated every day from both medical institutions and individuals. Storing, processing and sharing such large amounts of data is expensive, challenging as well as critical. This challenge leads to a scenario of a lack of interoperability between health institutions and consequently to a patient's health data scattered across numerous systems. 

Blockchain just like data science is gradually transforming the way several industries, including the healthcare to operate. And while data science focuses on harnessing data for proper administration, blockchain ensures trust of data by maintaining a decentralised ledger.

Hence forward, the theme for managing across the industries in future would be ----

“data science for prediction; blockchain for data integrity”

Trust in healthcare services involves two questions: whether the physician and/or medical institutions are competent enough to provide proper diagnosis and treatment, and whether they’re acting in the best interest of the patient. Establishing this trust is critical because it bridges the vulnerability, uncertainty, and unpredictability inherent to the provision of healthcare.

As per the GOQii India Fit 2018-19 survey report, 92.3% of citizens do not trust the healthcare system in India, which includes doctors, hospitals, pharma, insurance companies and diagnostic labs. The key reason for the erosion of trust is largely due to a series of failure in the healthcare system, particularly the negligence by hospitals in the recent past. In addition, lack of transparency also came out as the single biggest impediment to the healthcare system in India. Even though India offers the lowest cost healthcare services globally, yet treatment is inaccessible and unaffordable for a majority of people, calling for a focus on rationalising healthcare costs across the country, adding to the derailing of trust worthiness.

There is an urgent need to bridge the trust deficit between the patient and the doctor; patient and the hospital; as well as government and healthcare provider for the betterment of the Indian healthcare. To regain trust, focus on two important things such as patient needs and the costs of care is essential. 

The rapid growth in technology in the medical field has resulted in major advances in the understanding of disease processes, diagnosis, treatment, and course of diseases. These developments have affected people’s trust in healthcare in various ways over the due course of time. 

- Trust is a reaction to authenticity