Living in 2022 means existing in a world where technology can be found anywhere. It’s present in our clothing, our houses, our groceries, even in our toilets sometimes, but what about healthcare?
There are plenty of ways technology is used for healthcare and one may not even realize it. For instance, nowadays everyone owns a smartwatch, and these usually have some sort of fitness tracker, sleep tracker, or heart rate monitor to generate interpretable quantitative data that provide the user with a general overview of their health. However, despite this type of data being rather simple, it can become more complex when generated at a medical facility, with precise medical equipment, and there is a need to store this information in systems that are, preferably, secure.
The best way to guarantee this sensitive data has not been tampered with is to use Blockchain technology, and we are here to prove it! But first, let’s start off with the basics.
What Is Blockchain Exactly?
As its own name suggests, Blockchain consists of encrypted blocks of data that are linked together, in chronological order, creating a chain of blocks. If any of the blocks is tampered with, the unique fingerprint of that block, the hash, will also change and this “breaks” that chain.
As the chain is distributed, with a copy of it in many locations, tampering becomes impossible, making Blockchain a deeply trusted technology. It has many use cases, one of them being highly regulated industries looking to strengthen their data protection, verification, and fraud prevention.
The Need for Blockchain in Healthcare
The healthcare sector, as mentioned, deals with a large amount of sensitive information generated from medical appointments and clinical acts, and although it may not seem obvious at first, it could largely benefit from the use of this secure system to ensure that patients’ data is kept as it originallly was.
Particularly if you’re dealing with e-health systems to manage patients’ medical data, there are some factors that call for additional integrity measures, such as:
Use Cases
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) integrity and ownership
Records in the healthcare industry can contain various elements: from images, text reports, video, and plain raw data. For this type of information, there is a need to secure the integrity and ownership of the records, ensuring that their contents have not been altered, destroyed, or removed.
Sensitive Private Medical Information
Protected Health Information (PHI) is a profitable target for hackers for the most various reasons, like receiving treatment, or making false medical claims. This can endanger the lives of the patients whose information has been hacked into, and for this exact reason, it is crucial to always be sure if the data still is the original data.
Consent Management
When using e-health systems, patients should be capable of setting their own limitations regarding the access to their private medical information. Having a way of guaranteeing that the limitations that are set are not altered without consent is important to guarantee the compliance to policies like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or GDPR.
The medical supply chain is complex, as there are several factors required to guarantee that medicines and other healthcare supplies are produced, distributed, and provided to medical facilities to fulfill patients’ treatments. And with this complexity comes some issues, such as:
- Manipulated prices
- Late supply of prescriptions and drugs
- Costs linked to all the paperwork along the chain
As a result of the delays of the supply chain, drug counterfeiting becomes a concern, and this can lead to serious health problems and losses for the entire healthcare industry. So clearly, there are things that need to be addressed in the sector and given that all this data is stored in systems, there is a need to know it is untampered and compliant, as a way to prevent issues.
Blockchain truly is the way to go about this situation, and we just so happen to have a solution for this!
About CB Blockchain Seal
CB Blockchain Seal is the perfect gateway for the introduction of Blockchain in the world of healthcare! This technology is complex, but with our solution it becomes straightforward and cost-effective. All you have to do is contact us through this form, and with just a few clicks you can seal documents directly from your SharePoint, Salesforce or even other applications you may use!
This will also keep you at peace whenever an exchange of documents occurs between healthcare institutions, since CB Blockchain Seal is:
Cost-effective
Besides being proven and certified, our solution works at just a fraction of the cost of other sealing technologies.
Trusted and reliable
Blockchain is the go-to technology used for ensuring data is not tampered with.
Extra secure
Our software can write the document hash into one or multiple blockchains, at your choice. The technology also enables you to change the blockchain network in the future, or switch to an entirely new technology.
Fast and easy
Besides being fast to install, there is no need to use any other software, as mentioned, you can seal documents directly from the software you're familiar with.
HIPAA, GDPR, and other data protection regulation complaints
The documents do not leave your system – only their hash. Thousands of computers around the world will be able to prove the data's authenticity, without exposing the information contained within those documents.
Best of all, there is no need to learn specialized blockchain-related knowledge, or to create dedicated applications! Our solution takes care of all this for you.
Feel free to talk to us and ask for a free demo, we promise you will be blown away!