Blockchain technology is not just reserved for cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency mining, blockchain technology promises to be so much more than just that. We already know that the blockchain has the capacity to reinvent the financial world, and we have seen many examples of how blockchain technology can reinvent the world of transport and logistics too. Moreover, blockchain is already disrupting the education sector and is even making waves on a government level. Did you know though, the blockchain also has the capacity to totally reinvent the healthcare sector too?

Blockchain hospitals

Some of the benefits of blockchain technology in healthcare include supply chain management, the authentication of medications, vaccines etc and even the secure storage of medical records and messages. Many of the current ‘traditional’ technologies within hospitals and health centres would benefit from a blockchain overhaul, which would be sure to make processes far more efficient, far more cost effective and even, far more secure.

The Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is one of the first major hospitals in the world to start exploring blockchain technologies. This came clear in an announcement at the start of December that announced a partnership between MGH and MediBloc, a South Korean blockchain company that are focused on building blockchain solutions for the delivery and storage of patient data by healthcare providers.

According to Coindesk, Synho Do, the Director of The Laboratory of Medical Imaging and Computation has said that this partnership will benefit a number of different areas within the operation of MGH:

“From medical image analysis to health information exchange by leveraging our cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning. In collaboration with Medibloc, we aim to explore potentials of blockchain technology to provide secure solutions for health information exchange, integrate healthcare AI applications into the day-to-day clinical workflow, and support [a] data sharing and labeling platform for machine learning model development.”

Through 2019, we expect that more hospitals and health centres will establish links with some of the many medical focused blockchain startups that are now starting to enter the industry. We must also focus some attention on the likes of VeChain, who announced a partnership with the Chinese Government in 2018 that has been established to explore the production of a blockchain solution to help assist with the supply and record keeping of the countries vaccination programme. This will benefit people in China, as though the use of VeChain technology, patients will have access to better, more consistent and safer vaccinations, something that in the past has proved tricky to achieve.

This move by VeChain is no doubt the start of many more that could in turn inspire the entire industry to turn to the blockchain.