Trust or lack of trust has led to the rise of blockchains in the healthcare sector. As the industry increasingly adopts digital technologies and digitally converts issues such as fraud, inefficiency, and data privacy, problems arise – due to fraudulent means, discarded and mishandled data or records, estimated global health every year There will be a loss of about $455 billion in health care. As these issues are exposed and more and more digital solutions are available to address these issues, the blockchain emerges as the perfect underlying technology for addressing the lack of trust in healthcare.
Frost & Sullivan defines the blockchain as "a new data structure that creates trusted distributed digital books for assets and other data." It is an immutable, time-stamped digital event record. It can only be updated by the consensus of most participants in the system, and once entered, the information is difficult to erase (immutable).
This distributed digital ledger approach has been applied in hospitals (Vanderbilt University, Mayo Clinic and Mount Sinai), medical service platforms (Kenji Hospital, Korea) and improved data security (Columbia University).
Organizations such as Humana, Optum, and United Health Insurance are experimenting with the establishment of a doctor's directory and techniques to ease administrative burdens. In addition, the Australian federal government is piloting the technology to provide researchers with access to health records, while Zhongan (an insurance giant founded by Tencent and Alibaba) is collecting data at 100 hospitals in China. The pilot of the treatment.
According to industry research, nearly one-third of medical institutions are using blockchain technology. However, the current focus seems to revolve around B2B use cases such as health professional certification, medical bill management, revenue cycle management, contract awards and tracking. So radiology? The
ever-increasing digital demands
in radiology are conservative, with typical medical imaging scans measuring about 200 mb. As the global demand for radiology research continues to grow, redundant storage requirements mean a huge demand for storage space. While this can be solved with cloud storage applications, it's not just about storage—it also involves accessing those images when needed for future interpretation in a secure manner. With the spread of precision medical methods, the overall perception of patients also means that scan results can be obtained from other sources, such as pathology and dermatology.
This access to medical information is requested by patients and their doctors from other institutions. It is well known that imaging scans are repeated for the same patient in different devices, and the cost of imaging services varies, which leads to inefficient spending on healthcare funds – not to mention patients in the era of medical consumerization. The setbacks have come.
Moving large image files from one point to another poses some technical challenges, but more complex is the strict patient privacy law, which leads to bureaucratic behavior in the medical system. As we all know, the medical industry is the primary target of hackers to obtain data, which makes cyber security the primary concern of such record custodians.
Because of these challenges, imaging centers with large amounts of medical image data cannot effectively use this data to support the development of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. As cost pressures continue to rise in a value-based environment, they will benefit enormously from additional sources of income. In addition, the shortage of radiologists worldwide means that it is impossible to obtain or wait longer – which even leads to an extended turnaround time for doctors to diagnose. Therefore, teleradiology offers an easy solution, but in this area, the accessibility of patient imaging scans remains challenging.
The same challenges have hampered the development of artificial intelligence algorithms in medical imaging that must be trained against existing imaging scans. While artificial intelligence is ready to meet some of the challenges that plague radiology today, deep learning and machine learning systems rely on easier access to a wide variety of data (available through extensive research) to enhance their capabilities. In essence, if there is no convenient way, the development of artificial intelligence will be stagnant, and problems such as distance learning challenges will continue to exist.
Blockchain-based radiology solutions
currently have several companies in radiology. The field uses blockchains. Two typical examples are MDW (Medical Diagnostic Network) and DeepRadiology, which are all dealing with AI, but in a different way.
DeepRadiology is mainly an artificial intelligence company, for head CT scans and other under development Technology provides solutions. However, it plans to integrate blockchain technology to increase its international standing, support and motivate ecosystem members involved in the development and use of deep radiology solutions to reduce medical costs. These second and third goals It is also shared by MDW players.
MDW is a blockchain-based decentralized platform that connects imaging devices, radiologists, and AI developers. At the RSNA Annual Meeting in 2018, they announced their platform and had existing customers on their systems. The goal of the platform is to provide mass reading, second opinion, peer review or quality control in an open and transparent environment, as promised by the underlying technology itself.
MDW also provides medical imaging data sets specifically for AI developers, allowing the anonymity of image centers, monetization of annotated data, and providing critical training data to developers. It also introduced an artificial intelligence algorithm market to facilitate the use of existing artificial intelligence algorithms on imaging devices—a market that is expected to be similar to the cloud-based on-demand platform offered by EnvoyAI, Nuance, and Blackford Analysis. Next year, MDW hopes to bring more features to the platform while expanding its scale and acquiring more customers.
Other examples include MedNetwork and MediBloc, which both support storing and sharing medical information over a blockchain network. The former focuses only on medical imaging data, while the latter stores health records (including diagnostic results) and provides access to providers when patients visit. MedNetwork also has a telemedicine platform that provides AI diagnostics and second diagnostic advice, somewhat similar to the above.
The benefits of this technology for small players and teleradiologists are obvious. However, this is still only part of the blockchain radiology paradigm. Another use case for vendor technology involves device lifecycle management. The solutions provided by Spiritus Partners address key industry challenges surrounding device safety, quality and lifecycle management as they are suitable for all medical devices, including imaging devices. Obviously, the use cases of this technology are diverse and are still emerging.
prospect
Blockchain does not interfere with existing workflows, nor does it replace existing health IT systems such as DICOM or PACS, and does not affect interoperability standards such as HL7 or FHIR. However, it will serve as an additional layer of trust and security for seamless interaction by automating the traditional consensus mechanism agreed upon by all participants. In addition, the convergence of this technology with other emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence will enhance trust in these technologies and promote new healthcare delivery models and profitable choices.
Frost & Sullivan predicts that the blockchain in the medical industry will surpass its hype next year. By the end of 2019, an estimated 5-10% of healthcare-focused enterprise blockchain applications will be transferred from the pilot phase to a partial or limited commercial availability phase.
The blockchain for healthcare is also relatively immature, but the selected B2B business implementation examples include examples that can change the healthcare implementation. This year, Change Healthcare announced that its smart healthcare network has limited availability for claims rulings. It also works with TIBCO to develop blockchain-driven smart contracts for automated medical transaction processes. Hashed Health recently announced its initial partners for Procredex's professional qualification applications, including WellCare Health Plans, Spectrum Health, National Government Services, HealthLink Dimensions, LLC, and Accenture.
For radiology, we expect more organizations to join the blockchain-based platform.
However, it is important to recognize some of the limitations of this technology—the blockchain is just one of the larger under the umbrella of distributed ledger technology, and it is not necessarily the best. Over time, another technology may replace the blockchain as a better choice. Second, as an online game, the governance mechanism needs to agree first before it can begin to deploy the infrastructure, which is why the enterprise blockchain is better on public networks (such as public networks that are being considered for national health records). Real time opportunities.