Unlike in the past, authority has shifted significantly towards the patients, where the relationship was paternalistic before. Today, patients seek second opinions. This creates a need for health data mobility. However, patients still do not have much access to their information or have the ability to decide how it is shared or used.
This lack of medical data portability restricts patient and insurer choice. One of the biggest threats today is cyber crime which has increased in recent years. The health sector is one of the most targeted by hackers due to the sensitivity of its data which gets stolen and sold. Unfortunately, most medical data is held in one central repository which is largely non portable.
This increases security risks and also requires trusting in a single entity to protect the integrity of the data it holds. The very definition of fraud is presentation of misleading information as fact. The numbers surrounding fraud in the healthcare sector are mortifying, $230 billion lost in Health Insurance fraud globally and $200 billion in counterfeit drugs.
Whether buying health insurance for yourself or for employees, healthcare fraud inevitably leads to higher premiums and out of pocket expenses with lower benefits and coverage. An example of healthcare fraud occurs where unscrupulous individuals add false diagnosis or exaggerate existing prognosis in patient’s health file in order to claim insurance.
For all stakeholders in the healthcare sector, the process of getting all the requisite information to provide quality healthcare to a patient is tedious, opaque and frustratingly rigid. This increases time taken for claim settlement and reconciliation in-line with fraud, in turn adding large expenses on the providers administration costs such as Billing and Insurance Related costs.
Billing and Insurance Related costs alone are expected to hit $315 billion in 2018 and take 3.8 hours for the average physician to navigate through. As seen, the healthcare industry has several gaping holes which require a revolutionary approach to solve old problems. This is where blockchain in healthcare can dramatically alter the industry.
As discussed, current patient health records are held in different fragments all over the industry. Each institution holds patient information from the time of interaction. Blockchain technology helps data management by chronologically arranging and filtering this information. This makes the data far easier to understand and to help researchers find the information relevant to them quickly enough to make a difference.
Blockchain technology gathers all previous information from the disparate teams. This data would have been difficult to access unless you were a member of the organisation holding it. However, blockchain technology introduces transparency as the information is build up and added upon the decentralised blockchain.
All the relevant parties, the patient, the insurers and the medical team now have the ability to access the most up to date information rapidly. Thus, new levels of trust in the industry have allowed mutually beneficial relationships to thrive. For example, the verifiability and immutability of the data enable insurers to assess correctly the health of the person, which directly affects premiums they pay. This is a win-win situation to both parties.
Blockchain places the patient at the center of the system by gathering all disparate information into one profile. Secondly, the patient gains the ability to manage permissions, deciding who gains access to what information regarding them. This empowers the patient when dealing with practitioners and other parties.
