The introduction of the blockchain network in the healthcare industry is something that’s been talked about a lot. Though there isn’t a proper model in place to this day.
Discussing the topic, Samson Williams, Principal Consultant for Axes and Eggs, in a recent podcast talked about the difficulties faced while making the hospital staff understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the implementation of blockchain in healthcare.
Williams stated,
“The biggest challenge in the blockchain space is not the technology but the fact that humans hate that something is being changed in the way they work.”
Well, the implementation of blockchain technology does have a lot of advantages. The distributed ledger technology is capable of revamping the entire way the medical data is stored and accessed in present times. Its decentralized nature makes sure that the end-users are in control of their personal data that has been recorded by the hospitals.
A group of healthcare professionals had predicted back in 2018 that 2019 was going to be a crucial year for blockchain. As per the report, in 2019 alone, many firms had announced projects implementing blockchain in healthcare and life science data, but not many saw the light of day.
Bert Miller, a senior consultant at ConsenSys Health, talking about the developments in the space in 2020, predicted that there would not be a full-fledged blockchain-based electronic health record (EHR) in 2020, but that the supply chains and administrative functions would continue growing on the blockchain industry.
He stated,
“A healthcare-focused decentralized autonomous organization (“DAO”) will be started. DAOs can be thought of as programmable and community-owned digital organizations and they are excellent tools for managing collective resources or infrastructure. I doubt it’ll be a data union or anything like that, but the tooling around DAOs is getting really good, and there are some use cases around the edges in healthcare that are viable today.”
Coming up
‘Blockchain in Healthcare Symposium’, 2020, is happening on February 29 in Abu Dhabi. The event is expected to focus on the topic of the implementation of blockchain in the healthcare industry.
