In order to understand the interest of blockchain technology in the healthcare sector, it is important to understand the characteristics that differentiate it from current tools for sharing and managing data.
First of all, blockchain is a decentralised technology. Unlike traditional tools which are centrally managed by a single intermediary, the blockchain is a database distributed among all the nodes of the network. Thus, each minor has a copy of the register. This technology thus lends itself to the sharing of information between several stakeholders such as hospitals, research centres or pharmaceutical laboratories.
The blockchain also makes it possible to trace the origin and fate of each of the data recorded. Unlike a centralised system in which an administrator controls this information, in a blockchain only the owner can save it and transfer it to other stakeholders. In addition, although the ledger created by the blockchain is made available to all members of the network, the data it contains is encrypted, which helps to ensure the confidentiality and security of sensitive data.
Health Applications
Medical Data Management
Nowadays, it is difficult to clearly visualise all the data related to a patient and accumulated during their care journey. This information usually comes from a wide variety of sources, such as city doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharmacists or medical analysis laboratories. The software used by these stakeholders to collect and manage medical records is different and is not interoperable. Thus, it is sometimes difficult to share information. Also, although this information can all be retrieved and assembled, it is not always clear in what order it was produced and whether it is exhaustive. This problem is frequently encountered when admitting a patient to the hospital.
Healthcare professionals do not always have access to his history and do not have full visibility of the treatments he is taking, the history of his disease or his family history.
The ideal would therefore be to have a list that lists all the places where the medical data of the same patient are located so that they can be quickly retrieved. This list would be accessible, with the patient’s consent, to any healthcare professional who requests it. Thus, rather than having access only to the database of the establishment where one is located, one could have access to all the sources of information dispersed in all the databases of the network. Blockchain technology provides precisely this solution in the form of a distributed and secure register that allows the patient not only to have visibility on his data, but also to control access to it.
Optimization Of Clinical Trials
Clinical trials are a mandatory step in the development of a drug: they most often correspond to the first administration of a drug in humans.
Through the inviolability and traceability of data, the blockchain would provide a solid foundation for the inclusion of patients in clinical trials. Indeed, the blockchain can time-stamp and store the steps of the consent process ensuring their authenticity and traceability. This would allow clinical research managers to share consent requests in real time.
The protocols of these trials can also be recorded on the blockchain allowing patients to receive a notification with each protocol change, again requiring the collection of consent. Obtaining the latter must be a “lock” that prevents further study if it is not obtained.
Drug Traceability And Fight Against Counterfeiting
According to the WHO, nearly 15% of falsified medicines are in circulation around the world. This global scourge has serious and even dramatic consequences on the health of patients. Indeed, they do not meet any of the requirements for quality, efficiency and safety, resulting in nearly 800,000 deaths each year. The falsification can concern both branded products and generic products, and affects all therapeutic areas
Despite the efforts of the pharmaceutical industry as well as the states to curb this scourge, counterfeiting continues and is spreading in some regions exponentially. One of the possible solutions would be to act on the traceability system.
Thus the blockchain, by its level of security, appears as a revolutionary technology in the traceability of drugs. Indeed, the ideal would be to record each step of the drug distribution chain and thus combine the use of the blockchain with that of the different traceability technologies.
All stakeholders (supply chain actors, patients) could have access to this system and verify the origin and integrity of medicines. In addition, depending on the position of each in the distribution chain, the rights will be different: laboratories can register new drugs while wholesalers can only validate the passage of the product thus allowing control and increased safety of the chain.
Blockchain development therefore provides two real advantages in terms of drug traceability: it allows products to be tracked in the distribution chain, creating an airtight circuit, impermeable to counterfeit products; it also allows stakeholders, and in particular laboratories, to take retrospective action in the event of a problem by identifying the exact location of their drugs.
