Healthcare is a massive $8.6 trillion industry that includes everything from pharmaceutical companies and hospitals to mental health applications. Experts predict that the market will grow by plus/minus 12% annually through the 2020s. The medical data market was estimated at $32.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $105.73 billion by 2030 growing at a CAGR of 13.85% due to growth in AI applications, data-driven preventive medicine applications, and drug development. Today, the healthcare industry is built on historical data, and industry growth has been increasingly reliant on a larger, more extensive and more reliable data set. However, both users and providers operating in the healthcare segment face the following challenges:
Problem
According to The National Center for Biotechnology Information, from 2005 to 2019, almost 300 million people suffered from healthcare data breaches. In 2021 only this amount was 45 millions individuals. The number of such violations in healthcare is more significant than in any other industry. Based on a report by Trustwave, a healthcare data record may be valued at up to $250 per record on the black market. Thus, people lose not only their private information, but money as well.
The cybersecurity of the industry is its vulnerability. Most breaches tend to focus on the theft of financial records and other forms of personally identifiable information (PII), with a growing number of incidents beginning to target healthcare workers. The most serious and recent attacks were the WannaCry virus, the NotPetya attack, the NHS, Wood Ranch Medical ransomware attack, and most tragically, Duesseldorf, where a misdirected ransomware attack caused the failure of IT systems harming hundreds of patients and causing multiple casualties.
Solution
The medical industry has been prone to virus attacks: DeHealth applies a multi-layered approach that focuses on preventing attacks as well as mitigating the effect of ransomware. The first level of security is during the input data validation. The second level encrypts the data using top-tier banking-grade encryption methods to prevent any unauthorised access. Lastly, data is recorded in the DHLT Network making it immutable and secure in the private chain. Private blockchain structure protects DHLT Network from any external threats. DeHealth Network utilizes POA and all the nodes are run internally on secure server networks. DeHealth Network has certificates from external security audit (Reffer to 3.5 for further information)
Problem
Any integration is a long and expensive process: medical data and patient history are scattered across multiple platforms, and therefore, can’t be reproduced cohesively. Under such conditions, doctors are forced to work at the same time in 3, or even 5, different systems, filling out the same information. This poses challenges for both patients and doctors, additional administrative costs arise when data is transferred between systems, or in most cases, patients and doctors are forced to re-run medical tests due to a lack of data compatibility within the medical information system (MIS).
Solution
DeHealth dApp centralizes medical data in one system by utilizing a uniform cross-platform information system. This system records the data from different sources onto one platform, which may be simply and seamlessly shared by the User with verified medical professionals. Furthermore, by leveraging our relationships in the healthcare industry we integrated MIS into the DHLT network which synchronizes patient data in real-time. The blockchain infrastructure provides traceability that is necessary for use in electronic medical records, remote patient monitoring, medical EHR systems, and so on. The data architecture is designed so that DeHealth can communicate, gather, and share verified medical data with any MIS in the world, creating a patient driven electronic data sharing information system.
Problem
In the present Medical Information System (MIS) architecture the data verification process is mostly manual and extremely time-consuming. Medical professionals spend ⅓ of their time iterating with data in the MIS, which is then verified by at least one other professional. This time could be better spent taking care of patient’s needs. In addition, when labs, universities and hospitals acquire large datasets, each set has to be manually checked by a medical professional. This process is so extremely time-consuming that many hospitals employ medical record/data specialists which cost over $2.5 billion per year in the US alone.
Solution
In the last twelve months, telemedicine has attempted to tackle the problem of data verification by centralizing internal communication, offering a better UX and UI to save time for both patients and physicians. Web 2.0 architecture has proven to be absolutely necessary, recording a market surge from $9.2 billion to $12.5 billion in a span of 3 years. DeHealth has adapted this telemedicine model and combined it with the speed and safety provided by Web 3.0 architecture, cutting onboarding time, initial investment, and running costs by over 50%. Once data is verified and input into the blockchain, it cannot be changed by any stakeholders and includes necessary provenance records, consequently, providing the reliability and traceability that today’s data market so desperately needs.
Protecting data in the healthcare industry is no easy feat. Healthcare providers and their business associates must balance protecting patient privacy with delivering quality patient care and meeting the strict regulatory requirements set forth by HIPAA, and other regulations, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Because protected health information (PHI) is among an individual’s most sensitive (and for criminals, valuable) private data, the guidelines for healthcare providers and other organizations that handle, use, or transmit patient information include strict data protection requirements that come with hefty penalties and fines if not adhered to.