Blockchain-powered payments have taken the world by storm, and the health care sector is no exception. In fact, blockchain payments have the potential to reinvent health care and use it in a whole new light.
Medical examinations and clinical experiments, for example, prove to be quite the pain for the health care sector these days. Patients are not willing to put themselves through the process of these clinical experiments. Clinical trials pose potential risks and require a huge investment of time and effort. All these factors combine to discourage volunteers.
This is where blockchain comes in, by connecting transactions, data, workflow and other parts of the medical care ecosystem. This technology provides a platform where the patients are offered positive incentives to take part in the trial. For instance, blockchain provides a solution in which the patients are recognized as the owners of their own medical data and as well as the R&D data. In effect, the patients are strategic partners at such clinical trials, so they're involved in their own care strategy. This is an example of how blockchain features in for medical research and improves diagnosis and treatment.
In this process, blockchain provides a larger pool of data for the medical researches. At the same time, it also empowers the patients to be more medically aware of themselves, and have more power about deciding on what medical metadata is to be released. Starting from diagnosis to drug development, blockchain plays a big role in health care.
Blockchain could also help in hospital and physician directory management. What this does is paves the way for smoother health care plan processes, claims processes and payments.
The whole concept of insurance coverage could be improved with the help of blockchain. For instance, a patient could log in to the virtual platform and book a medical appointment for themselves. This information could be made accessible to the system’s insurance process. The health plan employees could go through this process and reimburse the patient according, all with the appropriate flow of information.
Coming to patient records, blockchain has the capacity to store data for patients, spanning their entire lifetime. In fact, a complete medical record could be pulled in from visits to hospitals, clinics, payments at pharmacies, and involvement in health care plans. This data could be stored on the patient’s medical account. In addition, the patient could be given full access to this information in order to take more informed medical decisions.
Those are just a few examples of how technology is reinventing the health care industry. One thing is for sure: Technology will not only help practitioners achieve better efficiency, but will also pave the way for better care, early diagnosis and control, rather than the well-known emergency treatment.
