Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts establish a safe, immutable and transparent network. They unite all units of the circle: patients, providers, healthcare organizations, insurance agencies. It makes a cooperation among following branches even better. The idea is to empower each patient with rights to control its personal data from any device via using the personal key. Medical smart contracts allow operations with patient’s health records to take place without fear of tapping private data. Thus, it improves the compliance between care team and a patient, lowers expenses, amount of clinical errors and breaches, saves time.
Current problems of Healthcare industry
Healthcare has always been one of those industries that suffer. It faces problems related to privacy, anonymity, personal-data safety. Healthcare industry continues using old rigid systems for working with personal data and transactions. It doesn’t provide nor guarantee safety for patient’s records. Accordingly, a higher quantity of patients worldwide start being suspicious about the cooperation with HealthCare establishments.
The Healthcare industry is strongly related to the paperwork – health records, medical history, laboratory tests, diagnostic examinations, prescribed medications, other protocols etc. It drowns in tons of papers. Thus, having a big stack of papers around slows down the process of curing and healing the patients and worsens the compliance itself. For example, if a patient is not satisfied with the therapist and wants to change the doctor, he has to fill out millions of different forms.
Another example is patients with chronic diseases. Patients with chronic diseases need health tracking and care 24/7. These patients and their care team don’t have any efficient way to access healthcare information.
An appropriate solution has to be found! Let us introduce you a real breakthrough in the HealthCare industry. It will simplify and eradicate all problems – Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts.
Why use Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts
Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts allow having a digital storage of all patients health records. A new doctor doesn’t have to use unreliable channels like a telephone or look around for a previous doctor to acquire patient’s data – he can get an access to it just with one fingertip
Let’s take a look at an individual who purchases health insurance. The details of their policy get linked to their profile within the blockchain. When a patient undergoes a medical procedure which is covered by their policy then the smart contract will automatically be triggered and the correct payment from the insurance company to the hospital will be automatically made. This will have a really positive impact on the fair execution of the person’s insurance policy. It will reduce inefficiencies and stresses that come with having to complete insurance claims forms.
Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts’ Immutability and Safety
Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts allow creating new, independent, immutable system, in which all patient’s records are secured. It creates a brand new so-called digital health industry. It has many benefits compared to the systems that are used now.
First things first a big advantage of it is easy accessibility, approachability, transparency for both sides – doctors and patients.
In the current state of Healthcare industry patients have no access to their health records. A big drawback of the existing system is the patient doesn’t know how the data is used. As a result, we face hurdles and difficulties with cooperation, compliance and obviously treatment because patients do not trust.
Now, patient’s personal records can be stored in blockchain ledger using different ways that are more convenient for patients. Some data such as anamnesis of life, the disease, examinations, laboratory tests, prescribed medications can be securely encrypted. After putting all the information to the blockchain a patient gets the private key for accessing data. Then, all patient’s personal records can be used only if he allows doing so. Thus it provides full control over the information by the patient. There is no need to worry about personal data safety. In case if the information is used by a doctor, pharmacy or a research lab – patient’s identity remains anonymous and an individual is aware of how the information is used.
Digital Health Direction
Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts lead us to the formation of Digital Health Industry, which takes care of the development of interconnected health systems in order to increase the efficiency of using computer technologies, intelligent devices, computer analysis methods and communication tools to help doctors, physicians, and patients analyze the development of the disease, calculate possible risks, strengthen personal health and well-being itself.
Smart Contracts facilitate launching of Electronic health cards. They successfully find their usage and are designed to allow everyone to take control of their health, learn to analyze the results of medical examinations, laboratory findings, get advice on choosing the most effective drugs, etc. Electronic cards allow you to keep diaries for therapeutic nutrition or medications. There is no need to worry about forgetting what drug to take and when; what products are more favorable for you, what aren’t. They are truly being an indispensable program for chronic patients and those whom certain treatment courses have been prescribed to.
Beyond Demands with Blockchain Smart Contracts
Furthermore, Smart Contracts make stiff and rigid Healthcare industry more flexible! Digital health is a multi-discipline system that includes a variety of stakeholders, including doctors, researchers and scientists with a wide range of knowledge in health, social sciences, health economics, and management.
Accordingly, the cooperation of different branches together makes the diagnostic process easier. Even at the present time, some diseases can be hardly diagnosed. Consequently, treatment becomes tough because of the lack of symptoms, hidden, unknown pathogenesis, etc.
Now, a surgeon or a physician can easily get in touch with scientists, researchers, discuss, overview possible underlying symptoms of the disease and think of therapeutic or surgery tactics.
Smart Contracts’ influence on the Pharmacy and Supply Chain
Pharmacy industry is closely related to the Health Care too. In the Pharmacy branch, the blockchain is used to fight against counterfeiting. Drug companies are able to improved drug traceability, simplify the process of interaction between parties in the supply chain, and even alert labs if fake drugs have been detected. Being able to easily retrieve data and prove documents aren’t fraudulent or altered, means a company is aware of what factory a drug came from and can trust given information. You can find out more information about the supply chain traceability here – https://applicature.com/blog/blockchain-for-supply-chain-management
Also, in the new database formed by blockchain technology, pharmacists, doctors are collaborating together. One is aware of new drugs, their therapeutic effects, side effects, length of treatment, possibility or necessity of combining a certain type of drug with another type (antibiotics + corticosteroids, h2 histamine + immunomodulators etc)
Speaking of pharmacy industry, we can’t help mentioning provenance solutions that blockchain can facilitate.
Implementation of the decrypted database will save precious time for doctors and of course patients because there are way too many situations in which seconds decide everything.
Life-saving feature of Blockchain Healthcare Smart Contracts
Blockchain technology also finds its life-saving usage in transplantology. Let’s take a look at kidney transplantation. There is a potential possibility of creating a waiting list for people who need a kidney transplant. This list would be stored in the Blockchain ledger. It would be cryptographically secure, and transparent. Currently, different transplant lists exist. But that’s not an easy task to get on that waiting list. It costs a lot of money. An average person is simply not able to afford the cost of getting A universal transplant waiting list would be fair to everyone.
Using smart contracts, people looking for kidneys, and potential kidney donors could be matched. The smart contracts would allow for kidney donors, to be transparently paired up, making matching donors easier and more reliable than current methods. Using this technology, it would be easy to know exactly where you stand in line and trust that you’ll stay there.
Safe and transparent fundraising with the blockchain
Nowadays, diseases have become even more harmful because of ecology, food, the lifestyle of people and many other factors. A lot of people can’t afford highly-cost examinations and operations. So they start looking for donations, charity or fundraising projects. There are many websites and organizations on the internet who fundraise money for a good use. They look transparent at first. But should we really trust them?
Smart contracts of blockchain allow establishing safe transactions between both sides – donors and recipients (those who ask for money). A blockchain-based technology creates an independent setting where each transaction that has been made is visible and is saved and stored in the ledger. Money can’t be stolen, accounts can’t be hacked because of the blockchain. Aside from lowering fees because of the absence of third parties, payment delays will be reduced and eradicated as well.
Smart Contracts Applications for Healthcare
There are multiple existing applications nowadays, they all make a huge impact on Healthcare industry. Let’s take a look at their benefits, how they work and tasks that they solve for certain situations.
Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)
FHIR is the acronym that stands for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR). It is a new standard for exchanging electronic healthcare information and replaces more rigid and complicated legacy formats. As patients visit various healthcare entities: clinics, labs or even hospitals there needs to be an easy and consistent way to share or transfer information from one location to another, that’s where FHIR comes in. FHIR is built on modern web technologies that are used by websites you use every day such as twitter or facebook. It allows implementers to efficiently integrate, request and transfer data between various healthcare systems.
The basic building blocks of FIRE are called resources. Resources are broken down into distinct categories that can reference each other to form a complete picture.
Some examples of resources include clinical resources such as:
- allergies
- medications
- care plans
Identification resources include:
- patient location of service
- device information
Financial resources include:
- billing
- insurance coverage
- eligibility information
The FHIR specification defines the way resources can be exchanged between different systems and each resource format is defined by the rest call for exchanging the data.
The ultimate goal of fire is to solve a wide range of clinical and administrative healthcare problems by making healthcare information more portable and making interoperability better.
Patientory (PTOY)
Healthcare is the industry that has got a lot of bureaucratic problems. Decentralization of this system is a way out. PTOY allows to decentralize healthcare industry and encrypt the data along the blockchain.
Patientory is being able to connect patients, providers and other health-care organizations and make the process of co-working very seamless. Any patient can have an instantaneous chat with a health-care provider and clarify all present questions and details. PTOY allows you to:
- access your personal data
- reach out to community
- learn more about your condition at any time
Providers can get an easy access to your health records, including notes, data from other organizations. One can interact with patients, manage their practice efficiently. The Blockchain-based system allows to store, manage and control access to your data. Also, it makes data breaches almost impossible because of decrypted information. A private key is used to access it so security of your health records is guaranteed.
It’s much easier to pull out clients information when you’re going to be searching through the patientory database rather than huge amounts of files lying around in cabinets or stored in other places. It makes everything simpler. It saves money, time, allows a better communication with one another. That’s what everyone wants to want.
Another benefit of PTOY is easy accessibility. PTOY has launched its own app. You can easily connect with any member of your care team with one fingertip – via iPhone, iPad, laptop etc.
HealthCoin
HealthCoin is the coin that converts your data into a health asset. It is a blockchain based personal health feature. HC enables individuals to have longitudinal access to their full health journey. It ensures that individuals own, manage and benefit economically from their personal health data.
How does this work? The digital exhaust from our daily lives is easily converted to a digital property. This property with a use of a wallet can enable speed and flexibility in transactions with products and services that we choose. Episodic care can turn into continuous care. As a result, health will benefit. Imagine working with a telemedicine provider to reverse diabetes or sending proof tokens to your employer or payer and avoiding private and personal information from being past on. Imagine working directly with a pharmaceutical or a research company interested in a glimpse of your genome.
All of this is possible today because things are moving quickly. Milestones include connecting with light-minded contributors and joining with a global provider of blockchain technology.
Their main tasks are:
- Population health
- Research trials
- Wearables/apps
- Hospital/clinical practices
Weed coins (POTcoin, HempCoin – THC, DopeCoin)
These new types of coins have been recently launched in the US and are booming in states like Colorado, Nevada, and California. You don’t have to be interested in marijuana to actually invest in these coins. There is a big demand for marijuana nowadays. More and more states choose to legalize the medical and recreational use of marijuana. This is going to become a million dollar industry, it’s been successful in Colorado, it has been taxed, a lot of that tax revenue is solving some major Colorado’s budget problems including making better schools, drug education programs and making much better use of money from what used to be a black market much safer for everyone and just generally helping the community. There is no argument that this billion dollar industry is exploding and will make a huge impact.
As an example, in Las Vegas you can buy marijuana without a pre-check or medical permission, you just buy it like a milk or bread.
Scientific experiments and investigations have been conducted to check and see possible positive effects of marijuana on human’s health. There are lots of confirmed and proved medical effects of marijuana. It is used for treating multiple diseases, starting off with migraines and finishing with diabetes mellitus and even cancer. Cannabinoids, active components of marijuana, are used and given to thousands of patients in different forms of drugs and their positive effect is proven.
Cryptocurrencies come in handy because they allow marijuana dispensaries owners to put their money on the blockchain platform without the interference of the third party. Accordingly, fees would be lower because there is no intermediary and the government wouldn’t have the ability to come and seize money from the individuals because the system is decentralized and independent. Your account cannot be frozen or tapped by hackers. Your data is safe and all transactions are much faster and safer.
These coins are already exploding and booming the market. For instance, HempCoin is not that popular as a Bitcoin but the demand and success of it keep growing rapidly. As a result, the price of HempCoin has grown from 0.30$ in December 2017 to 0,70$ in January 2018. That explains constantly growing demand, especially in the Healthcare industry. This coin is available for all people in the community. When anyone has an access to a global market – great ideas flourish and Healthcare prospers.
Conclusions
- Smart Contracts of Blockchain are used to empower each patient with control over their personal data.
- If an individual purchases health insurance – all the details of policy get linked to their profile within the blockchain. When a patient undergoes a medical procedure which is covered by their policy then the smart contract will automatically be triggered and the correct payment from the insurance company to the hospital will be automatically made. This will have a really positive impact on the fair execution of the person’s insurance policy.
- All Health Records are encrypted and only a patient has access to it via using a personal key, so information cannot be stolen or changed without a permission of a patient.
- Decentralized system of Blockchain technology guarantees safety for personal data
- Autonomy and Independence of Smart Contracts lower fee for transactions because of absence of an intermediary (bank, other company)
- Easy accessibility from any device helps patients to track their health data and condition 24/7. Also, if needed, they are able to connect and consult with their care team anytime. That brings digital health industry to a whole new level which is super relevant for patients with chronic diseases who require help and care all the time.
- Blockchain smart contracts help to simplify the process of interaction between parties in the supply chain and even alert labs if fake drugs have been detected. A company can retrieve data of received drugs and make sure that documents aren’t fraudulent. Thus a company knows where the drug came from and trust the given information.
- There is a possibility of creating kidney transplant waiting list where donors and recipients can be transparently paired up. Using this technology it would be easy to know what’s your spot in the waiting list and you can be guaranteed that you will stay on that spot and won’t be kicked out and removed from there.
Smart Contracts in the Ticketing Industry
Discovering Smart Contracts & Solidity: Blockchain Royalty Management
zk-SNARKS and zk-STARKS: Zero-knowledge Proofs Description and How Do zk-SNARKS Work
Blockchain Education: a Should-Have or a Must-Have?
Indeed the future for blockchain is bright. Thank you for the awesome thoughts that you managed to share with us. As you discussed earlier, there is a wide variety of potential blockchain projects that are being developed, including webchain.network that was released a few weeks ago.
This should be a heads up for the public to know where our economy is being driven by such applications.