Hello everyone! I hope you will be well and enjoying good health by the grace of Almighty Allah who is most merciful and gracious to everyone. Today I am here after a lot of gaps to attend the lecture and then to provide my assignment of the professor @yohan2on.

As I have attended the lecture and it is really an amazing lecture to explore blockchain technology in the medical field. And I have learned a lot of new things and if you want to learn something new and to explore your knowledge then come and join the lecture and explore your knowledge as well as earn your reward.

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Join Class:- Steemit Crypto Academy | S4Week3 - Blockchain Technology in the Healthcare industry

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Research and Discuss the potential applications of Blockchain in the Health care industry?

Image made by me by ^Canva

Before going in deep I want to explain the term Blockchain, Blockchain is a combination of two words. And the collection of the data to make it more transparent and visible to everyone in the form of the blocks is known as the blockchain. And these blocks are connected to each other and have been secured by the Cryptographic Techniques.

Today blockchain technology has become very famous and this technology is in operation everywhere. Due to the transparency of blockchain technology, it is playing an important role in different fields such as manufacturing, entertainment, similarly, it is also playing its key role in the Health Care Industry.

We have a great application and example of the use of blockchain technology in the health care industry which everyone knows and it is a recent and present example. We all know that recently the whole world has been humiliated by the COVI-19 and many incentives have been made available to compete with this evil disease. To compete with COVID-19, a contact tracking technology was introduced by South Korea and it proved very helpful in this situation.

The only reason to adopt blockchain technology in the Health Care Industry is that it is completely secure and transparent and there is no chance of cheating. It is also a decentralized system and anyone can get access to the data stored in the blockchain ledger.

As it is a decentralized and open-chain-based system so the use of blockchain technology in the field of the health care industry, can bring all the connected patients to one place making the process more easy, transparent, and secure. In addition, the data of the patients can be collected easily from far-off places easily using blockchain technology.

And blockchain technology can easily store the data of the health care industry in large volumes including data of the patients, doctors, and other workers. And it makes the whole system regulate without any blunder and fraud.

Moreover, the complex data of the medical field is collected in the form, of blocks under blockchain technology and it is secured using cryptographic techniques. Blockchain technology can also play its role in the remote verification of the patients and to add their data to the system.

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Potential Applications

Blockchain technology is playing an important role in the Health Care industry and it has different potential Applications. These potential applications are given below:

Supply Chain Transparency

We know that the medical health care field is so much vast and it is not at any specific place or region. It is playing its job everywhere. But we all know that it is facing the issue of the supply and the customers are unable to track their products which they buy and eventually not know where their medicine or other medical products have been reached.

This supply and tracking issue can be solved easily by the use of blockchain technology. By using this technology the customers can easily track their products from the manufacturers to the supplier and the way as well. In this way, the customers can easily determine the required time for their product and can easily manage that problem except to stay worried and anxious.

Medi Ledger is a practical example of the blockchain protocol which allows companies to verify the authenticity of the medicines, It also allows the companies to track the manufacturing date as well as the expiry dates.

Image Reference Goes to ^FarmaTrust

FarmaTrust is tracking and tracing application that is used to trace and track healthcare supply. This system also issues the new enforcement laws automatically when they claim any issue. And with the help of this application, we can easily track and trace all the data of the medicines by scanning their QR code as every medicine has its own unique code, and we can easily check the manufacturing and expiry date as well.

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Medical Staff Credential Verification

In the medical field, it is also necessary thing to recruit more workers in the whole field to verify their credentials. It is easy for those who are near the medical centers and head offices to verify themselves but it is a big problem for those who are living in remote areas to get themselves verify. But by using blockchain technology it is we can easily overcome this issue to provide them blockchain-based verification of their credentials.

Blockchain technology can also be used to track the experience of medical professionals and by using this technology different trusted medical institutions and organizations can use the credentials of their staff to streamline the hiring process for health care organizations.

Image Reference Goes to ^ProCredEx

The practical example of this Medical Staff Credential Verification has been provided by the ProCredEx a system by the US. We can use this system for medical credential verification. It enhances transparency and catalyzes the hiring process.

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Patient-centric Electronic Health Records

It is also a great issue that all the healthcare systems in each region are facing the issues of data siloes. The patients and the healthcare providers have incomplete historical data of the diseases and the less record of the cure and medication makes it hard to treat the patients. So by using blockchain technology we can store the data of the patients and the healthcare providers. In this process, the information will be linked in the form of electronic media by using blockchain-based software.

It is sure that through this process the actual patients do not go to the blockchain but their data of medication and treatment is published to the blockchain, even the single note of the doctor is also added to the blockchain and it is stored as a new hash function using different cryptographic techniques.

And this data is stored in the form of complex letters and numbers and it is secure as it is encrypted by cryptographic keys and when we have to use this data we have to decrypt that data and we can see our original data. So blockchain technology can also play an important role in storing the records of the patients and seeing the history of the complete analysis of the patients and their medication.

Image Reference Goes to ^HackerNoon

MedicalChain is a practical example of a company that is working with healthcare providers in order to implement blockchain-enabled EMRs. As we know that every time there is a need to change the records of the patients by the healthcare providers as we have to change the medications of the patients accordingly. They can log in by using their credentials and can access the recent data and change that data.

It makes the patient record more efficient, clear without any complexities, transparent, and easy to access.

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Smart Contracts For Insurance and Supply Chain Settlements

Image Reference Goes to ^{WikiMedia Commons}

There are different organizations and companies which provide blockchain-based systems and many players in the healthcare sectors, like the pharmaceutical companies, OEMs, wholesalers, insurers as well as healthcare providers, can easily authenticate their identities.

Due to this digital system, the process becomes more transparent and easy and the communication between the healthcare providers and the insurance companies becomes on the other hand more transparent and visible.

By having shared smart contracts among makers, distributors and medical care associations signed on a blockchain record, instead of every player having their own form of agreements, they can essentially decrease disagreements about installment chargeback claims for physician-endorsed medicines and different commodities.

Same as the smart contracts can also be used for the medical insurance contracts for the patients as Curisium has said that 10% of the claims are no more than disputes. But when due to the involvement of blockchain technology and smart contracts this data becomes visible in the digital form then it becomes more transparent and easy to manage all the crises by the insurance companies their costs as well.

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IoT security for remote monitoring

Image Reference Goes to ^Anteelo

In every industry development and evolutions are coming day by day. Similarly, the biggest evolution in the field of the health care industry is the adoption of remote monitoring solutions. By using this method the diagnostic devices are used to help the healthcare practitioners and give more transparency to the patients and it enables more proactive as well as preventive care for the patients.

But in this situation, the most sensitive case is the security and protection of the patient's data and the system should be strong enough that it cannot be tampered with by any third party. The system should be very quick to detect any emergency calls such as if a patient gets any attack, or fall just like the heart attack then it should be provided with medical assistance at the time.

And this security problem can be solved by the involvement of blockchain technology. We know that in the blockchain all the data is collected and bound to each other with the use of cryptographic techniques. Due to these cryptographic techniques only permitted authorities can access the data as the cryptographic keys are unique which are used to access the data, and none has the same keys.

And when the data of any patient is stored in the blockchain ledger using cryptographic keys then it is impossible to tamper any part of the data as it requires cryptographic keys and these keys are only shared with the permitted authorities.

Moreover, as we know that the blockchain is a decentralized system and during the interaction of the IoT devices there is no need to connect these devices with any centralized or any other 3rd party, so it is secure and completely protected.

No one can disturb and break the cryptographic keys as this process is so much longer and it takes millions of years to be operated.

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Conclusion

Today blockchain technology is taking part in every field due to its highly appreciated features of transp[arency and decentralization. Similarly in the healthcare industry blockchain technology is laying important role in different categories such as in monitoring the manufacturing and supply of medicines. It is also keeping the record of the manufacturing date and the expiry date.

By using blockchain technology it has become easy to keep the record of the patients and to provide medical aid at a time without any loss. By using this we can also provide the different instructions to the patients directly in the remote area by the use of the IoT devices.

The most important benefit is that all the data shared on the blockchain is encrypted by the cryptographic keys and no one can access it except the permitted authorities. Moreover, we can easily verify patients as well as the new staff's credentials.

So we can say that the use of blockchain technology in the Health Care Industry is no less than a blessing.

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Cc:- @yohan2on, @kouba01