Blockchain Will Unblock A Data Problem In Healthcare

The caregiving environment is becoming increasingly digital. Resultantly, a growing number of healthcare IT leaders are exploring whether blockchain is a viable solution for working with sensitive medical data.

Researchers are making considerable headway in leveraging relatively new blockchain technology for healthcare applications, and insurers are enthusiastically jumping on board.

Companies such as Humana and Optum Health are testing applications for blockchain technology. As an example, healthcare insurance providers are leveraging blockchain to improve the accuracy of their provider directories – a long-standing and expensive pain point in the industry.

Blockchain technology promises to deliver improved efficiency and increased transparency. Accordingly, 39% of responding executives plan to invest at least $5 million in blockchain research through 2019, according to a Deloitte survey.

The centralized nature of blockchain technology can significantly improve data security. The anonymous nature of the blockchain ledger is also beneficial for enterprises. Moreover, the network problem-solving aspects of blockchain technology is replacing the human trust feature required to handle many forms of sensitive information. Furthermore, stakeholders can use blockchain for smart contracts, saving the time and money it traditionally costs to sign and validate agreements.

There are, however, drawbacks to blockchain technology. For instance, researchers are grappling with how to deploy it on a large scale. Also, despite the encryption characteristics of blockchain, metadata and statistical analysis could enable malicious actors to reconstruct sensitive information.

Nevertheless, blockchain promises to improve the quality of information. The innovation increases efficiency and makes it impossible to tamper with data.

Already, industries have applied blockchain for purposes beyond its original use as a currency. For instance, enterprises are looking for ways to use the technology to manage digital assets, data and network permission privileges.

In the healthcare field, insurance providers are joining forces to research how to leverage blockchain to manage provider directories. The technology can lower the cost of keeping provider information up-to-date by distributing the workload required to do so.

With multiple people sharing the same information using blockchain, analysts expect the quality of data to rise and operational costs to fall.