Healthcare Organizations to Adopt Blockchain by 2020, DMI Says

In a recent statement, Jake Meisenbach, Senior Consultant, DMI, said there is a great opportunity in applying blockchain to disrupt the healthcare sector. Taking a closer look at how this technology can be leveraged and its pitfalls could create an opportunity to transform the healthcare industry and turn it into one of the most secure data-driven sectors, he said.

According to Juniper Research’s July 2017 report, 67 percent of enterprises had spent more than $100,000 by the end of 2016 and 91 percent planned to spend more than that in 2017 for the deployment of blockchain technology. The potential for trust-building, through the native functionalities of the technology is what makes it applicable to a plethora of sectors - from financial through, legal, logistics and especially healthcare.

Apart from the obvious application in the financial/transaction side of the industry, there is great potential in achieving medical breakthroughs through the use of patient data, in addition to the detection and prevention of counterfeit drug distribution.

Being able to collect, store and analyze medical data on a large scale, is a great opportunity for the creation of predictive models, healthcare advancements and improved accuracy in diagnosing patients. The best thing about it is that blockchain allows this data to be permanently stored on it, without significant risks of tampering and theft, while access can be managed by the data’s owner (the patient) and given only to those trusted and engaging with them, the analyst says.

A recent IDC Health Insights report, which forecasts that 1-in-5 healthcare organizations will adopt blockchain by 2020, backs up his projections.