In recent weeks, our social media has been flooded by technology phenomena such as the rising of Metaverse, the surprising NFT technology that makes a random selfie guy Ghozali rich, and everyone knows how popular cryptocurrency is today.
All of the technologies mentioned are built based on blockchain technology. Unfortunately, not too many people realize how blockchain can be due to the lack of the spotlight
But first, we need to know what it is blockchain?
Blockchain Concept
It is not enough to explain blockchain technology comprehensively in one article. Therefore, I will explain the non-technical perspective rather than a technical one. However, if you are curious about the simple technical explanation, you could check this video :
Ok, let’s start to talk about this technology from the non-technical perspective. I cited from IBM Website because this is the concise definition of blockchain :
“Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger that facilitates the process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network. An asset can be tangible (a house, car, cash, land) or intangible (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, branding). Virtually anything of value can be tracked and traded on a blockchain network, reducing risk and cutting costs for all involved.”
From that definition, blockchain is a technology that increases trust between the community involved in the process because the transaction is recorded and could be tracked without any intervention.
You can imagine if you are a musician that wants to sell your song to me, you can send your song by using blockchain to make sure that I get your original song. I can assure that your song is originally from you because the blockchain shows the file tracking.
When I want to sell your song to the second buyer, he/she knows that the file is an original file that comes from the original song owner. And yes, you as the song owner still benefit from the second sale because you have the right to this asset.
This example might relate to people right now since the community started to recognize Non-Fungible Token (NFT) and cryptocurrencies based on the same technology: blockchain.
Even though blockchain could be used in various industries, there is a doubt about the future by using blockchain technology. It is really hard to imagine how this technology could reshape the industry.
Digital Health In Indonesia
The digital acceleration happened when COVID-19 struck the world. In the health industry, the COVID-19 pandemic proves that a country with a strong digital health system could tackle the pandemic better. Digital health could revolutionize how the health worker communicates with the patient, and the data produced during a pandemic is important information to decide the strategy.
In Indonesia, digital health has started to get momentum since COVID-19. Moreover, Indonesia also has a big potential in digital health, check this infographic :
Indonesia is a big marketshare for digital health but blockchain popularity in this industry is not even close with NFT and Cryptocurrency hype.
But the next question, can you imagine how the blockchain technology use in digital health? this is what I want to share to make everyone easier to imagine how blockchain could improve our digital health industry.
How Blockchain Could Do in healthcare?
In the medical industry, blockchain can be used in a number of ways because of its openness and high security, resulting in enormous savings for patients and new avenues for their healthcare.
Futureproofing technology can be used in conjunction with the compounding nature of data and invention to generate an era of growth and innovation. (Forbes, 2021)
Patient Data Interoperability
I was shocked when my friend share COVID patient’s data from one of the local hospital. The medical industry have a complex problem in term of the ability to securely share and access sensitive patient data.
COVID-19 pandemic shows how important to make a serious effort in interoperability especially patient’s data. Interoperability means a feature that allows machine can exchange data with minimum human intervention.
Imagine a world where the healthcare institution can exchange their patient data from a location to location (ex : from hospital A to hospital B). Patient’s data transfer finished in a second without any uncertainty because it is use the blockchain technology.
Smart Contract
There are many complicated contract created in the health facilities such as insurance contract between patient, the health facility, and insurance company. And don’t forget the health research that also need a contract to get the data from a certain data point in a health facility. Everyone in the healthcare industry is aware of how time-consuming and tedious contract discussions can be.
The blockchain technology enable the smart contract that will be a game changer in how the health facility makes a contract regarding patient data or even their internal management data.
Health Care Transparency
The blockchain technology also have a big potential to create a patient-centric health system. Ask yourself this question : could you access your data in the health facility easily? and how far do you know about what kind of analysis use in the health facility that use your data? who is using your data?
With the blockchain technology, the health facilities could improve their data transparency without violating any patient’s data privacy. The patient could access their own data but limited to what is their right to check such as who using their data and how their data used?(as open as possible, as closed as necessary)
Conclusion
The rising trend of digital health in Indonesia open the opportunity of blockchain to use in the healthcare industry. I hope the stakeholder realize this technology before everything is going messy because so many health app already developed and we should avoid all of those application works in silo and endanger the patient’s data.
However, Government is a significant factor that will boost the technology to adopt because this should be included in the digital health roadmap. In addition, the Government should push the digital health law to protect the ilegal use of patient’s data.
Jati graduated his Master’s in ICT in Business and the Public Sector from Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is now currently pursuing his PhD from Leiden University on the topic of data privacy for the VODAN-Africa project.
