Telangana to implement BLOCKCHAIN IN HEALTHCARE

A blockchain policy has been drafted and released by The Telangana Government. The government has also stated that this policy is supposed to be finalised and implemented in a month.

This implementation would make Telangana the first state in the country to have its own blockchain policy. This policy aims at making Hyderabad one of the top 10 ‘Blockchain cities in the world.

Here are five ways blockchain can benefit healthcare:

1) Longitudinal records for patient: Compiled episodes, lab results, disease registries and results all can be achieved through blockchain, which would include ambulatory, inpatient and wearable data-assisting providers in a way that it comes up with better ways of delivering proper care.

2.) Master patient indices

Often records get mismatched or duplicatedwhen dealing with healthcare data.Also, for every single field- coming up, different EHRs have a different schema with different ways of entering and manipulating the simplest of data sets. Blockchain helps the entire data set to get hashed to a ledger, and not just the primary key. There can be multiple addresses and multiple keys when the patient looks for the address, but they will all yield to a single patient identification.

3.) Claims adjudication

Since blockchain works on exchange based on validation, the verification of the claims can be automatically done where the network agrees upon the way a contract is executed. Also, there would be fewer errors or fraudssince there is no central authority.

4.) Supply chain management

Contractsbasedon Blockchain can assist healthcare organizations in keeping a track of supply-demand cycles based onits entire lifecycle like, whether the contract is successful, how is the transaction taking place, or if there are any delays.

5.) Interoperability

The very promise of blockchain is Interoperability and it can be realized through the use of sophisticated APIs in order to make data storage and EHR interoperability a reliable process. With the sharing of blockchain network with authorized providers in a secure and standardized way, it would eliminate the burden and the cost associated with data reconciliation.

Besides, blockchain can also transform drug supply management, revenue cycle management, clinical trials and prevent frauds.

The road ahead

The potential of Blockchain in healthcare majorly depends on how healthcare organizations are willing to create and prepare the required technical infrastructure. Blockchain is expensive and some concern remains regarding its integration with the existing technology, and there is speculation about its cultural adoption.

But one thing that should be noticed is that over the past year, blockchain has taken healthcare by storm, and there are also significant investments for blockchain. Withwide-ranging possibilities of such sort, it is obvious that blockchain seems poised to one of the key pillars in the digital world. And hopefully someday, it will be able to transform the big data landscape.

This policy would also focus on various financial services, banking, insurance (BFSI), logistics and supply chain, public sector and pharma and Healthcare.