The company’s latest report, ‘Blockchain in Healthcare,’ affirms that the principal factors influencing the implementation of blockchain involve high upfront costs, scalability, old legacy systems, heavy industry imposed regulations, and privacy concerns.

Blockchain technology can build ways for healthcare stakeholders – pharma companies, payers, physicians, and patients – to cooperate, as well as promote information exchange. By utilizing the technology, synchronized data can be securely saved, allowing effective interoperability within healthcare organizations, while at the same time assuring that each party is bestowing the same real-world data.

Urte Jakimaviciute, senior director of healthcare market research, stated: “One major issue that healthcare providers are facing is sharing information without violating privacy regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR. Since blockchain can be used as an interoperability layer, it can help to link the data between disparate systems creating a transparent and secure path for patient data sharing. Blockchain-based systems can also give patients more control over their data, as the technology allows them to track who has access to their data and when.”

“Pharma supply chain management has a lot of issues deriving from the lack of modernization and a high number of intermediaries involved. Blockchain technology can potentially support the digitization of supply chains, overcome the middleman problem, and increase transparency and efficiency.”

“Companies, from manufacturers to retailers, can trace products through supply chains ensuring authenticity or flagging potential issues at any stage of the process. If a quality issue of the product is identified, blockchain can facilitate the recalls by determining the location of the faulty product within the supply chain.”

The capability to perform several transactions without a third party is considered as the key advantage of blockchain technology. Organizations can maintain their business without central authority involvement or control.

Nevertheless, this freedom comes with its share of disadvantages such as integrity, limited storage, and high development costs.

Jakimaviciute added: “Blockchain technology is not flawless as it comes with high implementation costs, slow transactional performance, limited storage capabilities and is unable to act as an analytics platform. Nevertheless, technology is an essential tool for establishing an efficient, transparent, and customer-focused healthcare business model based on higher degrees of accuracy and trust because it is a tamper-proof public ledger.”

“Whether hyped or not, blockchain offers higher security and transparency, which is a top priority for the entire healthcare industry – from pharmaceutical companies to payers and hospitals.”