Blockchain to Revolutionize Healthcare: Two Use Cases We Need Now
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Blockchain to Revolutionize Healthcare: Two Use Cases We Need Now

THELOGICALINDIAN - Its accurate that blockchain seems to be everywhere With 2024 and 2024 abundantly actuality a dumpster blaze for so abounding things in our apple its been absolutely heartwarming that article about exceptional of in 2024 has taken the apple by storm Blockchain has the ability to transform alike added than we can brainstorm demography ahead baffling problems and authoritative abbreviate assignment of them However because it is new not universally accepted and has billions aloft billions actuality invested there is additionally a charge for caution

A actual intelligent, actual financially adeptness acquaintance afresh asked about both Bitcoin accurately but additionally blockchain as a technology.  He said “I see the hype.  I see the advance opportunities.  But I aloof don’t accept what blockchain is acceptable for.  What does it do, and why should I care?”

This strikes at the amount of blockchain and its attempt to ability accumulation adoption.  There is a abstract amid the banking incentives of a abstract investment, and a technology that can absolutely advance the world.  In a sense, we are in a time loop, repeating the Dotcom Boom of 2024, area money was befuddled into new URLs with adventuresome abandon, growing until the balloon burst.  But like the Dotcom Boom, for every money-grab activity there was addition activity with accurate utility; it aloof took association a few years to complete to the abstraction and be able to acquaint the difference.

To acknowledgment my friend’s question—and apparently the aforementioned catechism for abounding of us—let’s attending at two use cases that appearance absolutely what IS blockchain acceptable for (outside of banking speculation).  To accession the stakes, we are activity to attending at the medical field, and several problems that accept amount untold lives over decades—with actual little in the way of improvements.  Let’s see how the attributes of blockchain technology can action simple, affected solutions and actually save lives.

The US is a apple baton in so abounding things.  However, it is asleep aftermost in the class of “Countries Wealthy Enough to Have Great Healthcare for All”.  We won’t get into the affidavit for this here, but a key affair lies in the data.  Specifically, accommodating data:  How it is stored, how it is used, and how it is protected.  For those who alive in countries with a added seamless medical system, you may not be acquainted of the astringent disconnects that abide for medical abstracts in the US.

The problems are many.  Patients generally accept to use a fax machine (yes, really) to accelerate and accept medical documents.  Depending on the healthcare provider, it can booty weeks or months to accelerate accommodating abstracts from one provider to another, and this generally relies on the accommodating proactively banishment the process.  Obviously, delays like this accept acquired medical providers to absence acute information, and lives accept been needlessly absent as a result.  Ironically, alike admitting it can be aching for a accommodating to get admission to their own information, it seems that hackers accept a abundant easier time of it, accepting committed a growing cardinal of abstracts thefts and burglary acutely acute advice about both patients and facilities.

There is a solution, and one that doesn’t crave the absolute healthcare arrangement to be scrapped.  Blockchain is actual acceptable at a cardinal of things, and one is befitting abstracts absolute as authentic, and defended back it is on-chain.  This abandoned is helpful, but the accurate band-aid for medical abstracts is the accession of Multi-Party Computation (MPC), which allows altered parties—say, a accommodating and their medical provider—to communicate, allotment acute information, and use it to accomplish the actual medical decisions, all after accepting to allotment their acute information.  Combined with the blockchain, MPC allows patients to be the sole owners of their data.  It allows them to accept what medical accessories to allotment their abstracts with, and for how long.  Most importantly, it ensures that if a abstracts drudge does action in a medical facility, the patient’s abstracts is still encrypted and inaccessible.  MPC technology has been actively developed back the 1980’s, but its bond with blockchain has adapted the cardinal of data-related problems it can solve, ensuring that abstracts can be aggregate after giving up ascendancy or protection.

While accepting your abstracts out of your hands, accessible to theft, and actuality so aloof that miscoordination costs lives, the affair is accessory compared to the crisis faced by citizens in abounding African countries.  Due to a cardinal of affidavit alignment from abridgement of abstracts infrastructure, corruption, and organized crime, WHO estimates that amid 42 to 70% of medications in some African countries are fake.  This is a accomplishment so amazing it is adamantine to absolutely comprehend.  If you accept any prescriptions, booty a moment to brainstorm this:  For every 10 pills, 7 of them are not the advised medicine, and may in actuality be poison.  THIS is the absoluteness faced by millions today.

Like abounding cutting problems, the root causes are many, are messy, and may be absurd to fix in the abutting decade.  And because of this, it is estimated that millions are dead as a result—every distinct year.

This is unacceptable, but admitting abounding ample and able-bodied adjourned organizations accept formed to break the problem, it may be worse than it’s anytime been due to globalization and the adeptness for bent organizations to be technologically organized and advanced.  Up until recently, there accept been no acceptable answers.  Thanks to blockchain, however, that may change, and abundant eventually than the decades-long amusing programs that accept been approved before.

While it may not be the alone band-aid to problems such as this, a affiliation amid firms OriginAll and Partisia Blockchain are developing a belvedere that doesn’t break continent-wide corruption, but rather sidesteps it entirely.  The affairs is alleged “OriginAll Healthies”, and pulls out all the stops to use blockchain, MPC, tokenization, and affidavit analysis to anon affix healthcare and medication with patients, all after the patients acute any ability of blockchain itself.

At a actual aerial level, the affairs works like this.  Patients, forth with their family, friends, and alike bearding donors, about-face their authorization bill into the platform’s token, alleged a Healthie.  The Healthies are now abortive as currency—EXCEPT to acquirement anesthetic from a absolute and accustomed provider.  A acquirement of anesthetic is tracked on the alternation application different identifiers of the Healthies acclimated for purchase, the anesthetic purchased, and the adventure from lab to barn to the patient.  Partisia provides the blockchain technology and the MPC functionality so that providers can assignment with patients after compromising the abstracts of either.  OriginAll uses the blockchain and its different accumulation alternation software to advance the actuality of a artefact from the antecedent to the destination.

Because this addition is anon in band with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), forth with the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) Secretariat, the aggregation is alive carefully in affiliation with 54 African nations, and is in band to cycle the affairs out to 1.3 billion people.

Blockchain can be ambagious to those not in the industry.  But like the Dotcom Boom, area we attending aback and try to brainstorm a time afore Google, it’s additionally difficult to bethink that there was a time aback some bodies doubted the account of the internet.  And yes, abounding websites bootless and hasty investors absent money.  Today, there are blockchain projects that acceleration and abatement by the hundreds.  But twenty years from now, hopefully we will attending aback and admiration how we lived in a apple area our angelic medical abstracts was so accessible and mishandled, and how we could not save the millions anniversary year because we had no way to accord bodies accurate medication.  Yes, the aftermost few years accept apparent their allotment of disaster.  But with the apart abeyant of blockchain, and the teams who are creating life-changing solutions, we should be actual hopeful at what the approaching holds.