The challenges for the healthcare industry are constantly about bracing up for the demand when it comes to delivery amidst the global population bloom and how it is straining existing resources, processes and time on the side of administrators and physicians. With the regulations set such as HIPAA and ICD-10 that governs health information from entry to interpretation, it is a matter of compliance without question as clinics and other organizations had adopted a lean model of outsourcing data entry in order to focus more time on patient sessions.
With challenges comes solution and the healthcare industry is being shaped by nascent technology such as Blockchain in streamlining health information administration based on quality, security and accuracy when it comes to the overall patient experience.
Blockchain
Blockchain has the transformative effect that will reshape the healthcare ecosystem as it brings about highly specific changes in the most challenging areas of patient care management.
In perspective, Blockchain in healthcare will allow multiple collaborates over a shared healthcare ecosystem to synchronize health information over a distributed ledger.
With Distributed Ledger Technology under Blockchain, asset features such as immutability, trustless entities (authenticity no longer in doubt) will allow the industry to identify fraudulent entries as early as the information entry stage, allow lower operations cost, streamlined processes, alleviate administrators from redundant procedures and offer better transparency within the ecosystem.
Blockchain in health information also empowers patient to take up ownership of their personal health information in the responsibility of sharing to their chosen physicians and be able to participate in researches without giving up their personal information.
Blockchain and the utilization of decentralized application will be the beneficiary of an open-ended distributed ledger of Electronic Health Records (EHR) across various uses from apps, to exchanges and information systems.
There are countless ways in which blockchain can revolutionize the health care industry – improving processing and improving safety.
Among the potential disruption and modernization of Blockchain can be applied into the following sectors of healthcare that touches upon secure data exchange, efficient invoice generation and robust payment tracking.
Can Blockchain Save Billions Annually
The healthcare industry loses billions annually due to fraud, cyberattacks, the toll of health information towards the administration: often dealing with archaic processes that are redundant and very much actor dependent. Part of the use cases of healthcare is to smoothen and make the health administration process almost friction-less, relying on automation and system mechanics for information verification. This takes away dependencies on actor dependencies whose costs are invisible due to the time and resources allocated upon pending verification roles.
When healthcare saves millions and eventually billions, the budget can go to spending for better patient outcomes.
With security, its immutability and core governance of verification, Blockchain will ensure the authenticity of information by placing data to the public Blockchain, without a central administration and using hashing technology to encrypt health information. This helps deter cyber-manipulation and theft of data.
Patient Records in the Blockchain
Without a central administration system that can be weighted down by its resources invested in its self-governance to keep up with resource pressure of information gatekeeping, the flow of information is seamless minus the disruptions caused by actor dependencies on information verification.
This is a feature that healthcare information admins are looking at, as it places trust on a robust mechanism but they still can maintain governance through algorithms.
Blockchain has the ability to safely transmit health information across verified collaborators, which acts as an anchor for quicker collaboration minus the time-consuming tasks of relay. This affects the time of delivery greatly, and will make for an efficient ecosystem for health exchange systems.
This same principle of mechanism can work with the manufacture of pharmaceuticals in the medical chain supply as it can efficiently track the production units, logistic distribution and dispersal to pharmacies. This feature allows backward traceability for audits.
Private Blockchain But with Interoperability
Interoperability is a huge problem in today’s health information systems. With various providers, private organizations having their own platforms and the inability to share across a large network of exchange collaborators, the health information platforms suffers from being a shut-in – hence “siloed” and the market is fragmented.
With Blockchain, it allows both public and private healthcare Blockchains to operate without caving them in to isolation. This is why distributed ledger is the building block of Blockchain’s DNA, information transfers across verified collaborators can be studied asynchronously minus the read-write over-write fears. This opens up the healthcare information exchange systems to new horizons. This enables large healthcare providers to work with small clinics across a network of Blockchain powered health information systems.
DynaQuest is a Health Information Management Outsourcing company in the Philippines and is among the providers that have a good track record of supplying outsourced health administration services through working with healthcare organizations in identifying their cost drivers, process stoppers and other business challenges. The company is crafting a unique outsourced service based on customized roles and process applications. With Blockchain, DynaQuest works with a number of accelerator programs to form an effective network that consists of consultants, administrators, developers and specialized support to help healthcare organizations transition into Blockchain.