🏥 Blockchain in Healthcare

Today's Highlights

• Securing medical records
• Blockchain jobs - a listing of fresh jobs related to web3/blockchain/crypto.
• In Other News - a few interesting developments we're tracking.

Securing medical records

In these last two years, healthcare systems across the world became more prominent in the eyes of society than ever before. With the increased burden on hospitals during the pandemic, more data is being entered into their systems than previously which could prove to pose serious security risks. Healthcare systems need to balance patient privacy and ease of access to patients’ medical records.

While Blockchain technology is mainly used for financial transactions, the principles of this technology can be applied to the healthcare industry, potentially providing a well-needed change in the way data is handled.

EHRs, which stands for Electronic Health Records, are how hospitals keep track of patients’ medical records. They need to follow certain privacy laws, and they are generally referred to as much more efficient to create and store than paper records. However, they are still not perfect, as many physicians bemoan the task of manually entering data for patients, and there are still potential data safety hazards with EHRs. But Blockchain technology can remove many of these problems.

Since Blockchain, in its most simplistic form, is a cryptographically enforced ledger that ensures the integrity of the data in it, this technology can allow medical records to be stored in a way that is secure, accessible to anyone on the network, and tamper-proof. It would also allow patients and practitioners to see data being updated in real-time, which means everyone can have confidence that the current data is accurate and up-to-date. Another important aspect of this is that the patient can choose to share their medical records, meaning that this time the patient will own their medical records, not the hospital.

There are already certain foundations in place to help healthcare systems transition into blockchain technology. A lot of people track their health (heart rate, movement, calorie intake, etc.) on their smartphones and/or smart watches. If this data is connected to a healthcare blockchain network, it could securely provide doctors with real-time data on their patients’ wellbeing.

Medicalchain is a company that uses blockchain technology to securely manage health records while putting the ownership of that health data into the patient’s hand. It also allows doctors to receive medical records without a middle man since the patient can choose to directly send the data. It is a prominent example of companies utilizing blockchain technology in non-financial use cases.

As the healthcare systems are strained more than ever due to the pandemic, blockchain technologies offers more security and efficiency in accessing and storing medical records.

💡 Blockchain Jobs

In Other News