Paperless Healthcare: The Benefits are Immense

The healthcare industry presents extremely unique and complex environments to manage with fragmented data sets spread over multiple hospitals and clinics, doctors and medical staff, and billions of patients. The current healthcare infrastructure uses a mix of papered patient records and EHR (Electronic Health Records) systems that fail to handle the critical medical information and its exchange.

In fact, the need for paperless healthcare is continuously increasing due to several factors, such as infrastructural problems, changes in consumer trends, an appetite for greater use of technologies, and a preference for mobility. The number of patients using a mobile phone to book appointments, read diagnostics, or see results online has grown from 36% in 2016 to 46% in 2018 alone. In addition, varied Data Protection Acts around the globe have made it mandatory for health organizations to manage their data in a better way.

Going paperless via digitization beyond EMRs is now more important than ever, especially in healthcare that needs immediate reforms in its data management systems. A mix of AI and Blockchain can help in deploying a digital-first patient communication platform where patients are empowered to handle their own healthcare. The judgment of Gartner, in their hype cycle for Blockchain, reiterates that blockchain in healthcare is an upcoming trend around the world.

Blockchain in Healthcare

Data is the new commodity in the internet era. As such, the question of ownership and identity management has become more relevant. Blockchain technology is enhancing the concept of self-sovereign identity wherein people become the focal points in technology systems. For instance, digital identity management tools based on blockchain are already popular in Germany. In these systems, the user decides who gets access to which personal data and for how long.

In the healthcare ecosystem, medical information is stored in silos. Digital Identity can offer an excellent opportunity for a shift from centralized records on paper to decentralized records where patients own the power to control the access and use of their personal data. Blockchain ensures security, scalability, and data privacy by streamlining medical records and enabling a secure way to share data.

AI in Healthcare

With AI, the decentralized database of information can open great use cases to revolutionize healthcare delivery. Applications in patient care, decision support, fraud detection, and disease management are becoming a norm in the industry. Physicians can use machine learning algorithms on the decentralized data stored over blockchain in order to improve patient diagnosis. Conversely, the patients can quickly address their symptoms, and proceed to treatment in time.

Benefits of Paperless Digital Records

The manual and piecemeal approach to everyday record-keeping pose serious risks, such as data loss and gaps between the patient records and other critical information, risk of exposure, excessive costs, and severe management issues. At times, the patient records were not accessible to the patient themselves. Industry statistics reveal that it takes 18 minutes for an average person to locate the information from paper records.

Blockchain and Digital Identity can both help overcome these shortcomings in the traditional medical record-keeping systems in ways such as:

• Digitization of records would help curb administration hassles and costs using tools, such as patient portals and instant messaging apps that help in interactive appointment bookings. In addition, medical communication, when automated, relieves the admin staff to handle better tasks than merely answering queries or rescheduling bookings.
• Mobile-friendly applications help users with increased convenience and flexibility. They can arrange for their medical appointments and view their own medical records and documents. Appointments can be relocated and the missed appointment rate can be drastically reduced.
• The healthcare provider can save huge costs by saving on unlimited paper stationery, its safe-keeping, and management, and lengthy postage and physical communication.
• Digitization offers access to unprecedented amounts of data. Data analytics can be used to utilize the available patient data for problem-solving, inventory tracking, patient surveys to better medical decisions.
• Digital payments solutions will definitely help a lot of trees to survive by cutting on infinite paper consumption that goes into record-keeping and patient communications. Corporate environmental responsibility of reducing carbon footprint increases the need for digital healthcare solutions in the future.

Blocknubie: Transforming Digital Healthcare

The global digital health market was valued at $179.6 billion and is anticipated to grow to $536,6 billion by the end of 2025. It is evident that digitization is going to be the centerpiece of healthcare innovations in the coming years. Blocknubie has taken pioneering steps towards healthcare innovations in record-keeping and communications, via self-sovereign digital healthcare records, by using the latest advances in distributed leader technology and online identity management.

The Blocknubie Vault helps convert paper-based processes to effectively paperless healthcare, via digital forms that can be executed anywhere, anytime, and from any device. The simple and intuitive interface helps healthcare professionals create and host their own online patient forms. The form building interface helps customization and error-free and environmentally digital sound processes.

The Blocknubie Healthcare module, another innovation of Blocknubie, is used by HEIs to issue medical records to their patients, acting as a bridge between the two. It helps the institutions to issue data and consume it while ensuring the heist levels of data security, and patient privacy. This is achieved by using blockchain to safeguard patient health information.

The AI system is able to efficiently read, comprehend, and learn medical datasets like patient records, and consultation notes made by the clinicians. At a later stage, this data can help in making fast decisions about causes of symptoms, proposed treatment, diagnosis of the problem, and predict future health status.

With its amalgamation of blockchain and AI, Blocknubie intends to be the forerunner in the next generation reforms in the healthcare industry. Paperless healthcare is not just digital, it is decentralized.