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Technology has benefited almost every industry it has come into contact with. The impact that it has had on businesses is undeniable. Truly, shifting to digital systems has fundamentally changed the way that work is done, vastly improved upon existing processes, and enhanced how businesses engage and interact with their customers.

Even healthcare, an industry known for being traditionally slow to adopt radical changes, is now embracing digital transformation as a response to ever-increasing regional and federal demands. This is done to improve the delivery of its services, operations, and outcomes. Indeed, digitization addresses some of the biggest problems facing healthcare systems all over the world. These include, but are not limited to, the rising cost of care, the poor quality and inaccessibility of healthcare services, inefficient back-office systems and processes, and the lack of personalized patient-specific treatment. 

Though these digital breakthroughs in healthcare may still be in their infancy stages, technology has still significantly transformed the relationship between health systems, healthcare providers, and patients. This can be seen from the digitization of health records to innovations in health insurance technology. Here’s a closer look at how digitalization is directly helping to save lives, greatly improve operational efficiency, and better the experience of both providing and receiving healthcare services:

Health Record Digitalization

Before digitization, patient medical records had to be manually encoded on paper before being transferred from department to department. It would be an understatement to say that it was a burdensome, time-consuming chore for everyone involved.

To make matters worse, the records themselves were inherently insecure and vulnerable to human error, loss, and damage. Simply locating an existing patient’s information could take a while, depending on the size of the institution. A person’s medical records could also be scattered across a variety of healthcare practitioners that offered different services. For example, a person’s dental records would traditionally be kept separate from their psychiatric records, their physical therapy records, and so on, hindering collaboration between a patient’s medical providers.

The introduction of the Electronic Health Record or EHR has been a blessing to both healthcare practitioners and patients everywhere. They allow providers and other authorized users to access accurate, complete, and up-to-date information about patients instantly and securely. EHRs help facilitate faster diagnoses, reduce medical errors, and improve the completeness and legibility of documentation. Additionally, they can bring down the cost of healthcare by avoiding duplicate testing and decreasing the time it takes to do administrative tasks.

Moreover, many healthcare providers are enhancing EHRs by ensuring accurate patient identification with RightPatient. It is a robust touchless biometric patient identification platform that prevents patient misidentification, duplicate medical records, and improves healthcare outcomes. 

Telemedicine

Access to quality healthcare continues to be an issue worldwide, especially in lower-income countries. They may suffer from weak healthcare infrastructure as well as a shortage of providers. Challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have also called for a definitive solution that will allow elderly patients and those with co-morbidities to safely see their healthcare providers without putting them at risk.

Telemedicine is the digital solution that can address all of these problems. Video conferencing allows medical professionals to see patients that may not be physically able to come to them. It also enables them to reach those who reside in rural or remote locations. They can even conduct one-on-one appointments with patients who live in other countries. Additionally, telecommunication is a valuable educational tool that helps facilitate training and collaboration opportunities between healthcare institutions and providers separated by long distances. 

Big Data Analytics

Many of us have freely embraced technology as a way to proactively keep tabs on our own health. Our smartphones can automatically track how many steps we’ve taken in a day, while wearable electronic devices can provide insights into our resting heart rate and blood oxygen levels. There is also an abundance of health apps out there for a variety of use cases, from meal tracking and calorie counting to meditation and mental health improvement. 

This means that there is an ever-expanding pool of data that can be collected from these sources, the importance of which simply cannot be overstated. Big data, when harnessed effectively, can be used to create a more personalized approach to patient care. Analytics can also empower healthcare professionals in providing faster, more accurate diagnoses and making better treatment decisions. Most promising, though, is the possibility that, in the near future, big data can be used in conjunction with artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict a patient’s medical trajectory. 

Modernized Insurance Claims Processing

Health insurers are also benefiting from digital technologies, especially with regards to claims processing and adjudication. Claims management has long been considered a major pain point in the healthcare lifecycle. Nowadays, consumers are paying more than ever for premiums and out-of-pocket costs, but do not feel that they are getting their money’s worth from their insurance providers. Most of their dissatisfaction comes from delayed claims payments caused by inefficient claims processing. 

Digitizing claims processing and adjudication addresses the root of the problem. Going digital enables health insurers to streamline claims management and offer claims processing in real-time, thus vastly improving the experience for their customers.

Even now, the future is looking particularly bright for technology in healthcare. There are always exciting new developments to look forward to, and we can expect this digital revolution to continue in the years to come.

The past two decades have seen an alarming crisis involving substance abuse in the United States. The number of addiction-related deaths has been consistently rising that in 2018, 67,400 deaths were recorded, a figure that is almost four times higher than the documented 17,500 deaths in 2000. The leading culprit among these deaths includes heroin, prescription painkillers, and opioids.

In 2011, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared an epidemic of overdoses from prescription painkillers, the most common of which are opioids. This opioid epidemic rapidly evolved from a problem concerning the abuse of prescription opioids to a nationwide crisis of illegal drug trafficking. Unfortunately, evidence shows that the ever-growing problem has started creeping beyond opioids to include other drugs like methamphetamine and cocaine.

Read below to know more about the opioid use epidemic in the United States and how you can get help for alcohol and drug abuse today.

When Did the Opioid Epidemic Begin?

The onset of the opiate use epidemic in the US is believed to have been brought about by the upsurge in the use of prescription opioid painkillers. In the 1980s, several medical journals published studies about the effectiveness of opioids as painkillers without the risk of addiction, and this triggered the beginning of the rampant prescribing of opioid painkillers by health professionals. Moreover, what is believed to be the “focal point of opioid abuse issues” was the development and approval of the opioid painkiller OxyContin in 1995.

What Are the Three Waves of Opioid-related Deaths?

In a span of less than 20 years, from 1999-2018, a whopping 450,000 people have already died from substance abuse related to an opioid overdose involving both prescription and illicit opioids. This opioid epidemic can be summarized in three waves.

The 1990s marked the first wave, where an increase in the prescribing of opioids was observed, followed by a rapid increase in opioid-related deaths involving natural and semi-synthetic prescription opioids and methadone.
The second wave took place in 2010 and is marked by exponential increases in heroin overdose-related deaths.
The third wave transpired in 2013, where rapid increases in deaths from overdoses on synthetic opioids, particularly fentanyl, was observed.

What Do National Trends Look Like?

National trends on opioid overdose deaths show the ever-evolving phases of the opioid epidemic described above. Also, death rates due to cocaine and psychostimulant abuse also increased around the same time when an increase in heroin and synthetic opioid-related deaths was seen. Studies show that this relationship is somehow propelled by an increase in death rates involving multiple drug abuse.

What Do State Trends Look Like?

Most US states have experienced considerable increases in opioid-related deaths beginning in 2000, with both the type of opioids involved and the number of deaths varying widely throughout the country. To illustrate, particularly the eastern part of the country has been shown to have high rates of deaths from overdoses on synthetic opioids and heroin. Addiction and deaths related to prescription opioids, on the other hand, tend to be scattered across the country.

Regional variations were also observed in non-opioid drugs such as cocaine, with the highest death rates recorded in the eastern US. In contrast, psychostimulants were responsible for many overdose-related deaths in the western part of the US.

What Are Some of the Most Important Statistics on the Opioid Epidemic?

• Around 21 to 29% of patients who were prescribed opioid painkillers abused them.
• Of those patients, about 8 to 12% eventually develop substance abuse disorder.
• More than 14,000 treatment centers for substance abuse have been established across the United States.
• Roughly 1.27 million Americans are now undergoing pharmacological treatment for substance abuse.
• A 142% increase in the number of patients undergoing pharmacological treatment at HRSA-funded health centers was observed from 2016 to 2018.
• A 4.1% decline in deaths involving drug overdose was seen from 2017 to 2018.
• From 2016 to 2019, more than USD 9 billion has been granted to various communities to help combat the opioid epidemic.

What Is the Government’s Strategy in Combating the Opioid Epidemic?

The National Institutes of Health laid out five priorities in the fight against the opioid use epidemic in the US:

• To promote treatment of opioid abuse through the use of overdose-reversing drugs
• To improve the public’s access to treatment facilities and services
• To provide support for scientific research on substance abuse
• To advance better healthcare practices for pain management
• To strengthen the public’s knowledge and understanding of the opioid epidemic by expanding public health surveillance

The opioid use epidemic in the US began in the 1990s, which marked the first of the three waves of opioid-related deaths. Since then, surveillance of appropriate opioid use has been strengthened to mitigate the crisis, and a decline in death rates is now being observed for the past few years. Hopefully, this is a sign of a reversal in the grim trends that have long been observed in this ongoing epidemic, which has resulted in massive economic, health, and social costs across the United States.

How can healthcare providers address the opioid crisis?

Healthcare providers across the US are facing the consequences of the opioid crisis. For instance, many of those who are addicted to opioids come in and assume the identities of other patients, or can even steal the credentials of others. In either case, they are committing medical identity theft to gain illegal access to opioids. Since there is no effective patient identifier present, many of these bad actors get away with it, hampering patient safety and corrupting the affected patient’s data. While different caregivers are using different strategies to reduce opioid cases, many are doing it effectively by preventing medical identity theft with RightPatient.

RightPatient is a touchless biometric patient identification platform that is used by several caregivers to accurately identify their patients. However, it can prevent medical identity theft in real-time. During registration, the platform locks the medical records with patients’ photos and biometric data. After registration, the patient only needs to look at the camera for verification – the platform runs a biometric search and provides the correct medical record within seconds. Thus, if a bad actor tries to pass off as the patient, RightPatient red-flags the individual, preventing medical identity theft in real-time.

In 2019, blockchain in the healthcare market comprised 2.12 billion USD. Market experts forecast it to reach 3.49 billion USD by 2025 explaining the prominent growth by the increasing demand for secure technological boost. Being in the epicenter of hi-tech trends, blockchain is believed to be one of the key directions in healthcare innovations in the near future.

Drug origin tracking and patient data security have become major problems in the industry. HIPAA entities confirmed a massive patient data leakage in March 2019 when medical information of 912,992 people was exposed with uncertain outcomes. This number indicates a 14% increase in data breaches compared to the period of 2013-2018 when medical data of 15 million patients was stolen through the whole 5-year period. 

According to the World Health Organization, about 30% of all drugs sold in Africa, Asia, and LATAM can be counterfeit. The tendency is gaining momentum yet along with the growing demand for diverse medicine.

Market trends

In Europe, starting from February 2019 the Falsified Medicines Directive obliges pharmacies, healthcare providers, and hospitals to follow strict authenticity control measures, otherwise, they may be removed from the legal healthcare market. 

The US Food and Drug Administration has signed requirements for healthcare supply chain advancement to enable the government and market players to take control over drug production quality at no risk for consumers. By 2023, all medical entities falling outside the regulations will be forced from the market until full legal compliance.

To accelerate advancements in the industry, the US Synaptic Health Alliance has been created involving top market players such as Humana, UnitedHealth Group’s Optum, Quest Diagnostics, Multiplan, Ascension, and others, who aim to let the healthcare industry evolve with the help of blockchain. The companies believe that the technology’s peculiarities will eliminate the risk of data leakage and reduce operational costs for the entities.

Why blockchain?

Due to the distributed nature, blockchain is able to solve challenges in security, authorization, storage, compliance and other issues in healthcare.

To begin with, healthcare is about personal interaction which sometimes lacks systematizing, especially in unprecedented situations like the coronavirus pandemic. Having a trusted, one-for-all system could help mitigate most of the messy processes. Leaking patient data through platform sources would become transparent to all platform participants. What is more, the data won’t be leaked since each interaction with sensitive data would require confirmation by the system, or the majority of votes, i.e. users.

Automated compliance 

Pharma supply chains involve dozens to hundreds of intermediary contractors, and each of them is obliged to abide by the laws and rules of certain legislations. Moreover, sometimes laws change and pharmaceutical companies must immediately obey them. A blockchain-based platform is built in a way that data and platform software is distributed among the platform participants. Once you set up regulations for automated compliance verification, they immediately apply to the whole platform if the majority of authorized users, i.e. consensus, approves it. Starting from that moment platform users will always be on the same page in all platform-tracked processes. Automated compliance would save a lot of time and man-hours without the risk of overlooking or missing something.

Removed counterfeit

Another huge challenge in healthcare is counterfeiting and fraud. The WHO expects that more than ten percent of all medicine worldwide is counterfeit, with 16.5 billion Euros lost due to this in 2019 according to the EUIPO. Every medicine needs to pass numerous tests and trials over a long period. At this point, drug-producing companies face the risk of failure due to component specifics or lifetime, drug inconsistency, market release date delay, troubled entry to national markets, or other reasons. And here some of them may opt to take an unknown, cheaper, trustless ingredient to accelerate the process. Blockchain removes this risk as all data on a blockchain-based platform is tagged and trackable up to its origin visibly to all authorized users. More than that, a company can tag drug ingredients and medicines with IoT sensors. In this way, the batches will be visible throughout their whole way up to sales to an end-user. Shady or careless contractors will be unable to add an unknown competent to a batch since all batch data will be transparent for the whole supply chain.

Improved trials

Blockchain allows for faster recalls and fair testing. 

With blockchain’s opportunity to provide the same information to all platform users, collaboration improves by itself. 

As a result, blockchain automates what can be automated, tracks what should be tracked, and drastically decreases failures due to human error. What is more, thanks to the use of blockchain data cannot be lost, compromised or hacked. In this way, a pharma supply chain gets full control over medical processes.

Use cases

At the moment all world’s biggest software developers utilize blockchain in their healthcare initiatives. IBM and Microsoft continue fitting blockchain in various domains. Other biggest blockchain in healthcare developers are Gem, Patientory, and Guardtime.

In January 2019, Aetna, Anthem, HCSC, PNC Bank, and IBM launched their initiative to develop a blockchain-based network for healthcare supply chains. At about the same time, Estonia announced it will use blockchain throughout the country to improve the overall performance of the healthcare system.

In 2019, a blockchain startup Solve. Care partnered with Arizona Care network and Uber Health for the development of a digital wallet for physicians, and Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals for the development of a patient management platform.

In 2020, HealthVerity announced its blockchain-based project to solve cybersecurity challenges following HIPAA regulations. The future platform is expected to bring high security to patient data. Lumeric, another blockchain development company, was acquired by St. Joseph Health to tame smart contracts for improving their administrative supply chain.

In the midst of 2020’s pandemic, Aetsoft announced their digital health passport platform. The platform can be used by medical institutions for ongoing tracking of citizens’ healthcare. The company expects the project to be successful as it can help track patient and citizen’s COVID-19, tuberculosis, HIV, and other test results on an institutional and even national level. Personal data is secured and private unless a person decides to share the data view with others. Information cannot be faked as each piece of sensitive data is marked and individually identifiable.

Conclusion

Blockchain’s perspectives in healthcare continue evolving with more projects entering the industry on the wave of the ongoing pandemic. The technology can massively improve and simplify processes in the industry through hi-end security and data control. All sensitive information about patients, doctors, staff, medical tests and trials, stock, and any supply chain documentation can be safely stored on blockchain visibly only to authorized staff, and unreachable to people from outside the system due to the distributed nature of the technology.