Is Blockchain the Answer to Data Privacy & Integrity in Healthcare?
Is Blockchain the Answer to Data Privacy & Integrity in Healthcare?
When most people hear "crypto," the first thing that comes to mind is "currency." Cryptocurrencies have grown in popularity in recent years and spawned an entire ecology of speculative trading, get-rich-quick scams, and plain fraud in certain situations.
However, a subset of the blockchain ecosystem is more interested in how the system underpinning crypto might decentralize information processing, make institutions more accessible, and revolutionize how businesses are governed. That aspect is quickly gaining momentum as more and more people are getting into the system.
Surprisingly, one industry will profit the most from this technology revolution: medical, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and supply chain management. These are easily among the most used yet least developed areas, with technology decades-old and data always in danger. According to recent studies, healthcare data is the new fossil fuel that is edging out the competition for more technologically advanced and stable systems that can prevent data hacks and breaches while promoting openness.
Transparency is an appealing landscape in a rapidly developing and technologically dominant society. This term is also linked to two other crucial terms: privacy and integrity. When sensitive information falls into the wrong hands in a healthcare system where there is a lot of sensitive information flowing around on the network that is, by design, not secure enough, it may be harmful. This is where blockchain comes into play.
Blockchain employs a complex multi-node system storing data as "hashes" or information trees. Every information bit is linked to the preceding piece, and any change in information affects the entire information string. These nodes might be ordinary users who want to make a transaction or validators known as "miners" who determine if the transactions are accurate. The process of achieving agreement on the contents of the blocks in the chain is referred to as "consensus." There are numerous methods for obtaining consensus, one of which is the Proof-of-Work process, which was first used in Bitcoin.
Unlike old systems where information changes are not reported to other parties or stakeholders, the information in a blockchain is not altered blindly but is notified to all partners or stakeholders. This indicates that until every stakeholder is involved, no one partner will be able to modify the given information. This significantly influences overall data privacy and integrity; it also implies that the information is hack-proof with little outside intervention.
It's similar to a bank locker in that there are three or four keys, and each key must be inserted into the lock to access it. This is similar to the healthcare sector, where typically, three partners are involved: the pharmaceutical company, healthcare practitioners, and the patient.
Since new avenues in blockchain technology are developing, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical businesses are increasingly shifting toward a more secure infrastructure that offers privacy, credibility, transparency, and data flow management.
However, one significant benefit is its decentralized character. Because blockchain technology is not controlled, it may not be accessed physically. Any data manipulation is reported to partners, and the node is protected. Changes become effective only when stakeholders or members have validated them.
Blockchain has become a partner in the fourth industrial revolution, often known as Industry 4.0. Data security has become a central problem; the answer is inevitably secure blockchain technology.
