The Future of Blockchain in Smart Healthcare
According to conservative projections, healthcare data will be one of the most valuable commodities on the black market by 2035, with a value of 10 trillion dollars, making it more valuable than all illicit narcotics combined. The most startling aspect is that the estimate is only for people in the United States; when all of the world's healthcare data is added, the amount will be substantially higher.
At Servblock we are writing this with an aim to better comprehend the gaps, structural issues, and, in particular, the evolving technological flaws. Healthcare data is mainly stored on insecure systems that employ outdated technology that data scientists term "wormholes," which allow hackers to take the data as needed.
But How Does This All Connect to The Blockchain & Why Should Anyone Care?
Today, everyone is aware of blockchain, and the majority of people know it from a single source: virtual money, namely Bitcoins. However, blockchain is more than just a kind of alternative money. Why? Because it employs a secure architecture that prevents hacking and allows for decentralized operation. This implies that there is no way any data kept on blockchain could ever be compromised. This is feasible because blockchain employs a three-step method to encode, transport securely, and decode data. This assures that the data is unchangeable, traceable, and accessible only to those participating in the process.
For example, the healthcare system has three partners: patients, hospital administration, and product providers to pharmaceutical businesses. When data is saved on a blockchain system, it is encrypted so that access is only feasible when the three stakeholders are in sync. In the absence of one, the data will be inaccessible.
Blockchain and Data Reliability
As a result, the blockchain provides a reliable system for preserving personal and medical information for patients. This would also minimize the cost of maintaining data through costly infrastructure, which is already a part of the current system where data centers are established, and virtual firewalls are built to guard against hackers. In the case of blockchain-based systems, the data is decentralized, which means it is divided into millions of little repositories in other devices and networks, eliminating the need for a firewall to safeguard the data, and accessing it will be simple because it is shared only among the parties concerned.
The most significant advantage is the transparency of the data held since the data is traceable, and every change in it is registered, documented in the ledger, and visible to all parties.
Blockchain and Diversity
More significantly, the blockchain is diverse; the applications we know now are changing at an incredible rate. With the security of each node member, connections are more trustworthy, and information sharing is much more reliable.
One thing that must be noted here is the lifespan of the data, which is critical for the hospital management system.
Because traditional methods have data limits or require records to be moved to offline locations, smart healthcare based on blockchain the data is never offline and is secure for longer. It is also visible to stakeholders even when they are not at their usual healthcare center. For example, if a person is from Mississippi and has an emergency in Utah, the blockchain-based approach would ensure that the data is available to emergency personnel for immediate and correct treatment.
The medical revolution of the twenty-first century is upon us, and blockchain technology is at the vanguard of this. Reach out to the team at Servblock to see how we can help you navigate Blockchain and DLT applications.
References
● Https://Www.Securitymagazine.Com/Articles/98324-Why-Is-Healthcare-a-Top-Target-for-Cybersecurity-Threats. Accessed 17 Sept. 2022.
● Chang, S. E., & Chen, Y. (2020). Blockchain in health care innovation: literature review and case study from a business ecosystem perspective. Journal of medical Internet research, 22(8), e19480.
● Saeed, H., Malik, H., Bashir, U., Ahmad, A., Riaz, S., Ilyas, M., ... & Khan, M. I. A. (2022). Blockchain technology in healthcare: A systematic review. Plos one, 17(4), e0266462.
● Tandon, A., Dhir, A., Islam, A. N., & Mäntymäki, M. (2020). Blockchain in healthcare: A systematic literature review, synthesizing framework and future research agenda. Computers in Industry, 122, 103290.
● Du, X., Chen, B., Ma, M., & Zhang, Y. (2021). Research on the application of blockchain in smart healthcare: constructing a hierarchical framework. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 2021.
