Posted By : Hotam
Healthcare is all about keeping yourself fit and active at all times. However, the current healthcare system is crippled with inefficiencies. Blockchain development for healthcare emerges as a probable solution that can address various challenges within the system.
Many people may have heard about blockchain technology in terms of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. It can also be widely used in other fields as well rather than using it for payment systems only. So, how blockchain works for the healthcare industry?
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Blockchain application development has gained traction over recent years. It's immutable and distributed data records nature makes it much more popular among people or organizations. So, there are many pros to blockchain technology in the healthcare industry.
Many healthcare organizations maintain records of their patients. Maintaining data records may become complex when data volume increased every year.
Data managed by healthcare organizations may include:
Verifying the correctness of the data is crucial for any medical service. This is where blockchain comes into the role, where information once recorded and encrypted, can not be changed after that at all.
Public data regarding the user, healthcare organization, and diagnosis reports can easily be available anywhere in the distributed network. Data transparency reduces fraud in the healthcare industry.
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Drug counterfeiting is a major problem in the healthcare industry. Here are some of the metrics revealed by the Health Research Funding Organisation:
The main issue with counterfeit drugs is not the fact that they are fake but they are quite different from the original product. However, many of the counterfeit drugs do not contain the actual ingredient that they claim to. If we consume these drugs, obviously they can impose some side effects on our body.
The main characteristic of blockchain technology is security which can be helpful in this scenario. Every new transaction which is added to the blockchain is immutable and a timestamp is added with the transactions which makes it easy to track the drugs. Once information is added to the blockchain, it can not be altered after that at all.
When a drug is produced, a unique hash is generated which contains relevant information about the drug and manufacturer. Each time the produced drug moves from one entity to another, hashed information is stored on the blockchain which makes it easy for everyone to track the drug's origin and authenticity and integrity.
Blockchain technology helps in two main causes when it comes to drug traceability:
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Hyperledger Fabric is an open-source enterprise-grade permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. It was established under Linux Foundation.
The distributed ledger nature of the blockchain differs from traditional databases because records are stored in a decentralized manner. There is no chance of failure for the data storage and the ledger is synchronized across the network. This use case (drug traceability), comprises manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, hospitals, authorities, and end-user. The process of keeping the ledger up to date with all parties in the agreement is through Hyperledger Fabric's process of consensus. This involves, ordering service (ordering of transactions) and the list of peers available on the network, to agree upon and commit changes to the ledger.
As we know Hyperledger Fabric is permissioned and private. It means that all the members have to enroll through the Membership Service Provider.
We will be using the Hyperledger Fabric framework to track each part of this process. Let's go into detail about how we will solve this problem using Hyperledger Fabric.
Before going into the details of the drug traceability problem, let's discuss Hyperledger Fabric Elements one by one.
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In our scenario, the approved manufacturer, the approved wholesaler, the approved pharmacist, and the approved patients should be the only ones allowed to join the network. Why do we use the word "approved"? Because Hyperledger Fabric is a permissioned ledger network in which members can register themselves through MSP (Member Service Provider).
In our scenario, we have two chaincode which will be running on all four channels.
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Based on the above diagram, below is a summary of the drug traceability problem:
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Interested in developing a blockchain-based healthcare solution? Connect with our blockchain developers to get started.
September 8, 2024 at 02:24 am
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