By admin 
Blockchain is at the forefront of impacting every industry out there, including healthcare. Andrew Vakulich as delivery manager on blockchain projects at Chudovo says that with blockchain healthcare institutes can create an efficient and secure patient-centric healthcare system. These can securely keep health records intact, especially when it comes to correctional health records.
By providing a secure way to store records, correctional facilities can benefit from:
- Providing improved healthcare to the inmates
- Ensure privacy for each individual
Blockchain-based correctional health records overcome the limitations of traditional systems plagued by regulatory and security issues.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how blockchain improves care access by offering secure correctional health records.
Health Record Management Correctional Challenges
Correctional facilities always find challenges when it comes to maintaining inmates’ health records. They suffer from:
- Inconsistent data capture methods
- Inability to analyze data or generate accurate reports
- Offer transparency to the process
- Inability to prevent document tampering
This is partial to fragmented systems which use a mix of paper files and old electronic health record (EHR) systems.
It’s vital to provide a secure solution that can handle security concerns, especially when it comes to fluctuating patient populations.
Furthermore, there is always a constant struggle when it comes to coordinating between correctional staff and medical professionals.
If we summarize, the challenges include:
- Fragmented systems: Use of legacy systems, along with paper files, can result in a challenging scenario when it comes to storing, accessing, and verifying the data. As correctional institutions have multiple departments and facilities, it becomes a challenge to verify and transfer information securely.
- Privacy risks: Institutes can have a hard time dealing with privacy due to the open nature of prison. Health records can easily get disclosed in shared space or during public medication distribution. That’s not ideal for inmates who have every right to keep their health information private.
- Inconsistent care: Due to high inmate turnover and frequent movement across different locations, health care specialists may find it hard to provide consistent healthcare to inmates. This happens due to lost follow-ups and administrative bottlenecks to handle new patients.
Blockchain can tackle all these challenges head-on. However, institutions need a proper blockchain healthcare app to ensure proper privacy, security, and accessibility. If you hire a proper blockchain software development team, they can ensure complete end-to-end development with a focus on usability.
Blockchain and How it Improves Health Records
This section goes into detail on how blockchain improves health records.
But, first, let’s start with Blockchain definition.
Blockchain is a decentralized ledger technology. It uses blocks to store and verify information using a consensus mechanism using cryptographic technologies. The core features of blockchain include transparency and providing trust to all shareholders.
For example, each block contains a list of records that are verified using a consensus mechanism such as Proof of Work (PoW).
This makes blockchain an excellent choice for electronic health records. The ledger protects patient information with access-based permission for shareholders.
The key blockchain features that improve health records include:
- Immutability: All data in blockchain is tamper-proof.
- Decentralization: It is managed by peer-to-peer nodes and not a single authority.
- Secure access control: Permitted access ensures that only authorized personnel can access the data.
- Audit trails: All transactions are timestamped, providing a traceable chain of events for anyone to audit. This is crucial for health data.
If you’re looking for blockchain development, choose a company that can give you end-to-end development services. If done right, it can lead to a transparent yet modern healthcare records management system.
Transformative Potential: Improving Care Access with Blockchain
Blockchain can resolve the correctional healthcare challenges with its features. It offers persistent data which is crucial to build a database with trust, especially in correctional settings.
By choosing blockchain, you transform the whole healthcare system by resolving the existing challenges, including:
- Using a unified blockchain network rather than relying on a fragmented system with multiple data silos across the correctional facility. The blockchain-powered electronic health record (EHR) system ensures security, privacy, and accessibility, while removing duplicate records and human-induced errors.
- Give both providers and patients permission to access their health data using digital signatures and cryptographic keys. Additionally, meet regulatory standards such as HIPAA so that it can be worked by external specialists, care teams, and other stakeholders.
- Provide all stakeholders with a secure way to access data in real-time. This gives them the means to make clinical decision-making on the spot. All health data are updated and shared seamlessly across departments to ensure minimal risk.
- Ensure smooth re-entry of individuals into the correctional entity without fearing the loss of health records.
- Provide better mental health support with complete privacy and confidentiality.
Some real-world examples of blockchain transforming healthcare systems include the MedRec project. It is a permissioned blockchain that efficiently manages patients’ medical records via proper data authentication and consent. Federal institutes have their own set of sponsored projects with a focus on providing better healthcare systems.
Any company can use blockchain to their advantage to create a blockchain app that benefits from its core features, including decentralization, real-time access, and persistent storage.
Barriers, Considerations, and Future Directions
Blockchain is a promising tech for healthcare. However, it is not as simple as it might sound. Adopting blockchain is a challenge and requires wide adoption not only from correctional institutions, but also from the patients.
Integrating blockchain to legacy systems is not ideal and can lead to interoperability, data storage, and scalability issues. Furthermore, meeting ever-changing compliance demands, such as HIPAA, with blockchain can lead to major hurdles.
As for on-ground reality, training inmates and employees is a major challenge, as it is common not to like change. Adopting blockchain can lead to major changes, and hence, institutes must proactively train them via a pilot project.
As for the future, blockchain is promising. It resolves the issues with centralized or fragmented systems where each shareholder can participate without sacrificing privacy, security, and data access. Regulatory institutes must also acknowledge blockchain and provide new regulatory guidelines for healthcare systems using blockchain technology.