Blockchain in Healthcare- SteemitCryptoAcademy S4W3- Homework post [yohan2on]

This is my submission for the Assignment provided by Professor @
yohan2on. The session was on Blockchain in Healthcare.

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Before understanding the use of blockchain in the Healthcare Industry let's understand what is Blockchain. Well, in simple words. As the names suggest Blockchain is the Chain of Blocks and where every block contains some transactions details and these details will be secured with Cryptography Algorithms. Blockchain is a Public Distributed ledger that is immutable.

Blockchain is a trust and till now this is the most secure ecosystem well, have seen some hacks still, those hacks were on the wallet not on the Blockchain. We can use Blockchain at all places to build a Transparent & Secure Ecosystem whether it is in Government, Hospitality, Personal Identity, Crypto, and in the Financial Sector. Blockchain is currently the safest option to secure the data either on Public or Private blockchain so that we can have ownership. Let's understand how we can use Blockchain in Healthcare-

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Let's suppose there is a person who has gone through an accident and got admitted to the hospital with the help of other people. The doctor came and was done with the basic take care still before going for the complete medication the Doctor needs to know everything about the Patience like whether he has any disease or allergy kind of issue and if the person is already getting medicine from any other Hospital.

There may be the possibility the patient is not in the condition of sharing these things or is not aware of the technical terms that the doctor is asking this is the problem. So what we can do with the help of the Blockchain we can create a Private Distributed Ledger where the Doctors can share the complete details about their Patients and the Data will can be shared with the permission of the patient for further medication. So what will happen is whenever the patient will meet the doctor as routine a new Node will be created that will have a link with the last Node. Here is the diagram-

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Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) Model

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This model is nothing but a decentralized place where all the doctors can save the data of their patients over the blockchain.

Also, we can have a set of Nodes of the Patient where every appointment has different nodes so that if the patient goes to Hospital A from Hospital B then Hospital B would be able to understand how Hospital A was treating.

Interpretation:
You can see in the image the person was getting treatment from Hospital A but due to some reason he needs to go to Hospital B but before going for any medication the Hospital A needs to understand the entire scenario. In this case, it may happen that Hospital A denies sharing the details about the patient however if the data is being uploaded on the Blockchain every time whenever the patient visit the Doc in the Node B1, B2, B3... etc then these data will be very helpful for the Hospital B to provide the best treatment.

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Applications of Blockchain in Healthcare

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There is two major applications of Blockchain in Healthcare.

1. Healthcare Information Exchange:

In the above part, I have explained how the HIE system is going to work and even there is some Country who uses this to make a common system where every hospital can use to keep the data. These data either can be used in Surveys, Research purposes and for Patients use so if it is on the Blockchain then it will not be shared without the permission of the Owner.

source

We have a Centralized database that is traditionally being used but the issue will the data will be under the control of the Central person(Hospital) and it can be corrupted changed and being used in the wrong way without the permission of the owner.

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2. Supply Chain Management:

Supply Chain Manager is described as the process of transferring the goods from the Production to the Final Customer and the activities involved in this is refer as Supply chain management. As we know in the Blockchain all the data will on the decentralized ledger where the data can't be modified and if anyone is doing then a new node will create with the address of the previous Node so if any middle person will make a mistake it will be easy to identify who did this.

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Problem with he Existing SCM: There are some drawbacks in the supply chain management as transporting the drug from Production to the final patients involved so many steps and there are chances that at any step the drugs can be exchanged corrupted and due to the centralized and not a proper management system wee won't be able to know at which step this scam happened.

Blockchain has the potential to transform the traditional Supply Chain Management Ecosystem as on every step a New node will be created that will have a unique Key of the Previous Node which will have all the information received from the previous one along with the current step verification about the drug. Since the data will be on the blockchain no one can change it and if anything happens wrong with the final product then we can identify where this happened. Also, Blockchain provides better Management, Safe, Scalable ecosystem.

Here is the Flow of Supply chain management in the Healthcare-

source

Interpretation:

Step:1
In the very first step, a Node will be created which will have the information related to the Invention of the Medicines, Tests, Formulas, Trails etc in the form of the Transaction over the blockchain.

Step:2
IN the second step this invention will reach the Companies to create this medicine on a larger scale. Again in this step, a new node will be created which will have data of the production details also this new Node will have the address of the previous node in the form of Transaction. so if you are aware of Programming stuff then it seems like a LinkedList Algorights. lol..

Step:3
Once the Medicines are ready after the packaging they are ready to move to the Warehouse for further distribution. Again another node will be created that will have information related to the Stocks, Certification report, distribution point etc along with the key of the previous node and this will be stored over the blockchain in the form of a transaction.

Step:4
Now in this step, a new node will be created that will have information related to the Transportation like Qty, Pickup address, Drop address along with the address of the previous node and it will be stored over the blockchain in terms of transactions.

Step:5
In this step, a new node will be acted that will have information about the transportation from the Main warehouse to the local Warehouse. Now from the Local warehouse, these drugs are going to supply to the Healthcare Providers and Retailers.

Step:7
Healthcare providers are Hospitals and Pharmacy who is going to give this medicine to the patient. In this again a node will be created which will have all the details related to the Medicine along with the address of the Previous node.

Step: 8
In this step, we do have an E-commerce system that directly pickup the Drugs from the Warehouse and deliver to us. In my country apps like 1mg, NetMeds etc are popular for such services and these are a bit cheaper too. In this case, well a new Node will be created that will have information about the authenticity of the drug also the address of the previous node.

Conclusion:

You can see how transparent the entire ecosystem can be and if any changes will be made in between then it would be very easy to identify who is responsible for this mistake. Even we can implement this ecosystem in the Covid Vaccine Distribution which will definitely going to make sure to the patient that the Vaccine they are going to take is 100% verified and safe to take. Initially, we have seen that the supply of vaccines was less as compared to the demand and such conditions may lead to theft adulteration, and wrong activities but everything is managed by the blockchain Supply chain management then this issue can be resolved.

3. Reward:

This is an additional use case that can be implemented in healthcare. As we know research institute requires data so if we can tokenized things then the user can get rewarded for sharing their data like health improvements, tracking etc.

Cahllenges with Blcokchain

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It seems really amazing to see Blockchain healthcare and trust me it is but the implementation is not easy. It is a big complex and needs participation. Nothing is perfect in this universe and even the use of Blockchain in the Healthcare industry brings so many challenges like-

Intial Cost: Since the blockchain is an emerging technology and growing the countries are still not ready to implement this concept. it will cost so much for the operations and establish a Blockchain-based ecosystem initially but in the long run, this would be beneficial for sure.

Some Players are not willing to bring Blockchain: Thereare firms who don't want to bring blockchain in the Healthcare so there could be reasons like Initial Cost, needs to spend money to develop the ecosystem or even they are doing something wrong which can be exposed.

Scalability: Healthcare Supply Chain Distribution system is a bit complex as compare to other Supply chain management as it needs to take care of every single step very carefully. Well, Blockchain seems quite advance however in terms of stability it still needs to improve to store the data of the healthcare industry. If we talk about Ethereum Blockchain then it is capable of holding approximately 750KB of data and in Bitcoin, it is close to 1 MB only. In the Medical on the data basic, there are Billions is being generated.

Governement Support: It is needed that govt should also take steps to build a Blockchain-powered ecosystem and fund businesses to work on blockchain in order to bring transparency. Also, they can implement laws to convince big players to adopt this revolutionary technology.

Conclusion

Blockchain is a trust which brings a transparent and secure ecosystem for the businesses however it is still in the initial phase and there are a lot of things that need to be done. the use case of blockchain in Healthcare is vital and will transform the entire ecosystem and will bring transparency, easy-to-use features, security of the data, etc. I really enjoyed the session and doing this assignment. I will look forward for such amazing topics.

If you have any query then feel free to discuss with me in comment.

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Don't get Stressed, Stay Blessed.

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