Identity thefts, spamming and financial data crimes, the patient’s data can be misused for many reasons as patients don’t have control over their data.
2017 Ponemon Cost of Data Breach Study says that the cost of data breaches for healthcare organizations is estimated to be $380 per record.
IBM’s Institute for Business Value Blockchain interviewed 200 healthcare executives and found 16% of them are willing to deploy a commercial blockchain solution.
Though healthcare centers are adopting digital technologies, the patient’s medical records are currently stored in the centralized servers. It creates the attack surface for hackers. Accenture’s survey claims one in five employees working in the healthcare is willing to sell the sensitive medical data to the unauthorized parties.
Electronic health records(EHR) contain exploitable information like name, address, place where you work, prescribed medicines, number of doctor visits and payment methods. A Medical record also contains sensitive protected health information like HIV diagnoses, cancer diagnoses, or psychological conditions.
Data stored on blockchain is like your cryptocurrency such as bitcoin saved in the crypto wallet. Though the user’s wallet can be identified with a public key, only a secret private key can help anyone read or understand the stored data. Any healthcare service provider would require patient consent or authorization to access PHI. If a patient denies sharing the medical data, no healthcare provider could get access to the records stored on the blockchain.
Add further information related to the timestamp, demographics, involved stakeholders, and eventually sign and provision the data to be stored on the blockchain.
The completion of the above steps adds value to the data to be stored on the blockchain.
We shall now discuss how health records can be stored on the blockchain. Even more on https://www.leewayhertz.com/healthcare-blockchain-how-medical-records-secured-blockchain/, Patients can share their private key with health organizations: Blockchain healthcare solution can never reveal the patient’s identifiable information until they provide their private key. Patients can share the private key with the health organizations if required. Data would always remain non-identifiable to healthcare providers without the secret key. It is similar to how cryptocurrencies are stored on the blockchain, where the owner with the private key can only access it.
A blockchain can either be a public or a private blockchain. Since an user identity will not be visible in this solution, a public blockchain could also be used.
Once the data is stored, it can be consumed by different healthcare blockchain vendors using smart contracts.
Smart contracts will ensure a transparent, conflict-free exchange of the information. In case, the user denies to exchange the information; no one could access the patient’s health records.
Blockchain healthcare solution could also enable healthcare research companies to use health records for research purposes without affecting the patient’s privacy. Read further to understand how
Data Mining and AI in Healthcare Blockchain
Healthcare data nowadays is generated using different technologies like AI, IoT, or ML. The generated data can be used for multiple purposes, including disease prevention and cure, drug development, and clinical trials.
Here’s what benefits could Blockchain bring to the Healthcare Industry
Simplified Approach to Data:
Unlike a traditional way of managing information, healthcare records can be shared across multiple nodes using the healthcare blockchain.
The need for storing data in multiple databases could be removed, hence, enabling the simplified approach to access the information.