Blockchain in Healthcare

Store Patient Data securely using Smart contracts

The healthcare industry is an information-intensive business, and the rise of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices has created significant challenges in protecting patient privacy. Blockchain technology offers a revolutionary solution by providing a secure, decentralized, and tamper-proof way to manage sensitive health data (Vaishnavi et al., 2025).


The Challenge: Data Privacy in a Connected World

IoT devices, such as smartwatches and remote medical sensors, are transforming healthcare by allowing for real-time patient monitoring. However, this raises concerns about data security, as this sensitive information is often stored on centralized cloud servers vulnerable to data breaches. Blockchain provides a new model where patients can have full control over their own data, granting access to doctors and researchers as needed instead of relying on a third party to protect it (Vaishnavi et al., 2025).


Real-World Applications

  • Ensuring Drug Authenticity: By creating an immutable and transparent record for every medicine, blockchain provides a powerful tool against drug counterfeiting, allowing the entire history of a drug to be traced from the manufacturer to the patient (Wason et al., 2025).
  • Improving Clinical Trials: All data related to a clinical trial can be stored securely and transparently on a blockchain, ensuring the results are reliable and can be easily audited (Wason et al., 2025).
  • Securing IoT Data: Blockchain can be used to create a secure and reliable platform for the exchange of sensitive EHR data from IoT sensors, enabling real-time tracking of patients while preserving privacy (Vaishnavi et al., 2025).

The Challenge: Fragmented and Insecure Data

As an information-intensive business, healthcare generates enormous amounts of sensitive data. A patient's medical records are often dispersed across multiple clinics, hospitals, and insurance companies, making it difficult to get a complete and accurate medical history. Current centralized systems are also vulnerable to data breaches, which can expose highly confidential information (Vadivelu et al., 2025).

Diagram showing the benefits of blockchain in healthcare, including accuracy, security, and auditing.
Figure 6.13: Blockchain technology’s benefits for the healthcare sector.

The Blockchain Solution: A Unified and Secure Ledger

Blockchain offers a revolutionary solution by creating a single, secure, and shared digital ledger that can unify this fragmented system. Its core features provide immense benefits to the healthcare sector:

  • Health Data Accuracy: All of a patient's medical information—from prescriptions to lab results—can be integrated in an automated, tamper-proof manner. This gives healthcare providers a complete and accurate picture of a patient's medical history, leading to better and safer care.
  • Health Data Security: By decentralizing data storage, blockchain eliminates the risk of a single point of failure and makes the system far more resilient to cyberattacks. The immutable nature of the ledger ensures that data cannot be altered or mishandled.
  • Improved Auditing: The transparent nature of the blockchain enables auditors to easily verify transactions and helps healthcare institutions remain compliant with legal and regulatory requirements.

Advanced Use Case: Revolutionizing Clinical Trials

The development of new pharmaceuticals relies on a complex and expensive clinical trial process. Blockchain and smart contracts can be used to manage trial data, patient consent, and results in a transparent and reliable manner. This speeds up the research process and provides auditors with a clear, open framework to endorse the trial on ethical and legal grounds (Vadivelu et al., 2025).

Diagram showing how smart contracts can manage clinical trial data.
Figure 6.9: Blockchain in clinical trials.