Initialized by IBM and other health and insurance giants, the new blockchain project reportedly provides solutions for three main challenges in the healthcare industry, which are directories, interoperability, and payments.

DIRECTORIES – RECORD UPDATING

Every region is required to keep a public record or “directory” of the physicians and healthcare provider that is effortlessly accessible to hospitals, health organizations or patients. Such directories need to be constantly updated for the sake of the patients, to guide them to the nearest doctors in the area should emergencies surface. According to IBM, applying blockchain technology in this particular field can help resolve management and record updating problems.

INTEROPERABILITY

Interoperability is the ability for hospitals to exchange information on their patients or treatment, regardless of the systems used at each organization. Blockchain technology allows not only easier data transmission but also upgrades inter-platform communication among the most commonly used systems by hospitals, thus help to solve the interoperability problem.

PAYMENT – TRANSACTION PROCESSING AND SECURITY

According to IBM, blockchain technology can help create a decentralized ledger of nodes that come with a cryptographically paired private key and public key, and whoever wants to access the encrypted data needs to have a public key that matches with the private key of the node. By using Blockchain, each and every computer in the system can examine the legitimacy of the transaction without compromising the security of the customers’ account, unless the impossibility happens and all computers in the network are hacked at once.

This way, customers, banks, governmental departments or healthcare organizations will be able to make transactions faster and more efficient without worrying about any potential security issue. Even more, utilizing blockchain for payment, anti-hackers/anti-malware protocols will save a significant amount of money and thus cut down the cost for the healthcare industry.

As The Crypto Sight reported on Jan 26, IBM and some insurance giants including AetaI announced a collaboration to design and create a network using blockchain technology in the healthcare industry. IBM is recognized as the leading enterprise blockchain provider. It has been reportedly working with hundreds of clients across financial services, supply chain, government, retail, digital rights management and healthcare to implement blockchain applications